Heroes and Ghosts
by kingsmeadroad
Summary: He wanted to tell her that it would be fine now; he wanted to wrap his arms around her and stroke her back and try to reassure... Tracking Caryl through Season 1 moments. Faithful to the tv show. Rated M.
1. Tell it to the Frogs Part I

This story takes us right back to the beginning. Each chapter will cover part of an episode of the show and the dialogue will be from the episodes, pretty much word for word. I will build in moments between Daryl and Carol, or explore their thoughts where I can, and where it makes sense. Really I just want to explore their character development from Season One right through to Season Three, in the most realistic manner possible.

**Chapter One- Tell it to the Frogs Part I**

Somehow, Carol thought that the camp would be relatively safe. She thought that once they were in such close proximity to other people, stuck in tents with no four walls and doors to hide behind, she would be less frightened of Ed. In her mind, she had been convinced that when the world ended, Ed wouldn't hurt her anymore. She had even thought that he might stop looking at Sophia when the whole world up and went to shit. But it hadn't worked out that way.

To her endless shame, Carol still showed up every morning with new bruises or cuts and falsified excuses as to how she came by them overnight. Everyone knew she was lying, and she was aware of it, but old habits die hard. She wasn't going to have a conversation about it.

Every night, when the others would gather around their fire and try to work out this terrifying new world, Carol was left with Sophia and Ed with a fire of their own. Isolated, separated from the group. It meant that she was entirely unable to get her head around what had happened; the outbreak, the walkers, the end of the world. During the day, she could talk to the other women under Ed's constant watch, but at night she had no escape at all. Worse, at night she knew she wouldn't ever escape; she was constantly glancing at Ed, seeing him watching Sophia with menace in his eyes. Night time was the worst time. It was where the others found companionship and made their friendships. She didn't have that.

Lori's husband had returned that day. It seemed like something from a dream when Carl had run to hug his father. Carol had been left standing nearby, knowing that had Ed been given up for dead, her heart would pinch with relief and not sadness. She knew that she would never run to him and thank God for his safe return. It made her feel ill and her stomach squirmed watching it; she hadn't even been able to smile for Lori and Carl.

Even with the good news that Rick was alive and well, that night she found herself, again, alone by the fire with Ed and Sophia. None of them spoke, and Carol could feel the tension right down in her bones. Sophia was looking at the ground and nowhere else. The other group was listening to Rick, giving him the chance to discuss his experiences and the absolute disorientation of waking up to a shattered world. Carol had never had that conversation with anyone properly. They didn't really talk about the big concepts during the day, it was more about the basics; food and clothes. And Ed was always listening, her constant companion, her constant threat.

She glanced up in time to see him tossing a heavy log onto the fire. It caught Shane's attention immediately. "Hey Ed, you wanna re-think that log?," he asked from across the camp.

Carol's stomach sank.

"It's cold, man," Ed called back, grimacing.

"Cold don't change the rules, does it? Keep our fires low, just embers, so we can't be seen from a distance, right?" Shane reminded him. Lori curled closer to Rick as Carol watched. She knew how uncomfortable Ed made each and every one of them.

"I said it's cold. Mind your own business for once," Ed spat. Shane got up quickly, agitated, and came close to their fire. The others pretended not to watch, but the tension built regardless. Carol cursed Ed and then Shane. She needed Ed calm, not aggressive and angry. Pissed off Ed was the worst Ed.

"You sure you wanna have this conversation, man?" Shane asked quietly as he approached the fire and stood in front of Ed, looking menacing.

"Go on, pull the damn thing out. Go on," Ed gave in, pretending that he didn't give a shit. Carol knew that she might very well pay for this later, and Sophia refused to raise her eyes from the ground.

To his credit, Shane didn't like how isolated Sophia and Carol were. He tried to make conversation with them as often as he could about innocuous things like food or the weather, just to let them know that he was there. After he took the log from the fire, he crouched in front of them and lowered his voice again. He could smell the burning and through the smoke he easily saw the redness in Carol's cheeks and her anxious glance up to him.

"Hey Carol, Sophia. How you all this evening?" he asked gently.

"Fine. We're just fine," Carol replied. She would have sounded reassuring if she hadn't spoken slighter louder than she'd intended- and if she hadn't looked so terrified. "Sorry about the fire," she added, almost in a whisper, apologising for Ed.

"No, no apology needed. You all have a good night, okay?" Shane stood back up again, and spoke once more to Ed as he walked away, "Appreciate the cooperation." He knew that having the last word wouldn't help, and Ed looked absolutely furious, but he didn't have time to think about it because when Shane got back to the warmth of his own group around his own fire, he arrived to a very tricky conversation.

"Have you given any thought to Daryl Dixon? He won't be happy to hear his brother's been left behind," Dale intoned. It was the elephant in the room; Daryl and Merle were rude, ungracious and downright hard to cope with at times. But thr world was gone to shit enough, and just because Merle was an arrogant son of a bitch didn't mean his abandonment was justified. Daryl wasn't going to take it well at all. Merle was all he had, and the brothers were close.

T Dog claimed the responsibility immediately. "I'll tell him, I dropped the key. It's on me," he said softly.

"I cuffed him. Makes it mine," Rick said, try to make T Dog feel better, and lapsing into thought about the guns he had left on the street in Atlanta.

"Guys, it's not a competition," Glenn said. "I don't mean to bring race into this, but it might sound better coming from a white guy." Merle had displayed his racist tendencies on the roof in Atlanta, and Rick hadn't met Daryl, but he assumed that Glenn knew was he was talking about. This didn't sound like it was going to go well at all. He felt safe with Lori beside him and Carl lying in his lap, but he felt he'd left a mess that he needed to clean up.

"I did what I did, hell if I'm gonna hide from it," T Dog said, conscious of the part he'd played in leaving Merle. He felt like there was no heat from the fire and he could barely focus. He just kept thinking about Merle lying on the roof, waiting for the geeks to come knowing that there was no way out. It gave him the shivers to think about it for too long.

"We could lie," Amy suggested tentatively.

"Or tell the truth!" Andrea added forcefully. "Merle was out of line. Something had to be done or he'd have gotten us killed," she pointed out, before turning to Lori. "Your husband did what was necessary, and if Merle got left behind, it was nobody's fault but Merle's." She finished her speech and said nothing else, but she knew that Daryl definitely wouldn't take that well.

"And that's what we tell Daryl?" Dale asked, incredulous, turning to her. "I don't see a rational discussion to be had from that, do you? Word to the wise, we're gonna have our hands full when he gets back from his hunt," he finished.

"I was scared, and I ran. I'm not ashamed of it," T Dog said quiely, but Andrea pushed the thought back at him."We were all scared, we all ran. What's your point?"

"I stopped long enough to chain that door," T Dog shared. "Staircase is narrow. Maybe half a dozen geeks can squeeze against it at any one time. It's not enough to break through there, not that chain. Not that padlock," he said, and then he stopped for a second because his real thought came out. "My point, Dixon's alive. He's still up there, handcuffed on that roof. That's on us." He stood up and walked away from the fire, knowing that tomorrow he'd be facing a raging and unbalanced Daryl Dixon.

When Rick finally woke up and left his tent, he found Carol with an ironing board and his clothes. "Morning," she said. "Still a little damp. Sun will have them dry in no time."

"You washed my clothes?" he asked. It hadn't even occurred to him.

"Well, best we could. Scrubbing on a washboard ain't half as good as my old Maytag back home," she smiled.

"That's very kind. Than you," he replied. Carol smiled at him slightly and went back to work. In her whole life, nobody had ever thanked her for anything. She was used to Ed thinking that washing and drying and cooking and cleaning was all she was good for. He had never once acknowledged the work she did constantly to make him comfortable. She didn't really know what to do with Rick's thanks, but she decided right then that he was a good man. Again, her stomach burned because she knew Rick would never hit Lori, call her names or bully her. It just didn't seem to be in his character.

She got to thinking about the conversation she had overheard by the fire last night. She was nervous about Daryl's return. He and Merle made a good team, but they were too much like Ed for her liking. Before she could think too much about it, the screaming from Carl and Sophia alerted her.

Most of the camp alighted and ran right into the woods to find out what the screaming was about. Carl and Sophia had stumbled across a walker, quiet and ominous, eating a fallen deer. Shane, Rick Dale and Jim took care of the walker for the most part, managing to disconnect its head from its body. The smell was foul, a mixture of rot and the coppery tang of blood hung in the air, decay filling everyone's nose and mouth. The rustling in the trees kept them on edge and they all faced the woods.

Nobody looked happy when Daryl emerged from the trees, crossbow in hand.

"Son of a bitch!" he yelled. "That's my deer! Aw look at it, all gnawed on by this filthy, disease bag, motherless poxy bastard!" he yelled, kicking the walker on the ground.

'Calm down son, that's not helpin'," Dale interjected, knowing that Daryl was going to have more bad news before too long.

"What do you know about it, old man?!" Daryl spat out. "I've been tracking this deer for miles, thought I'd drag it back to camp, cook us up some venison!" He calmed down for a second while he assessed the deer. Food wasn't exactly thick on the ground. "What d'you think, think we could cut around this chewed up part right here?"

"Man, I would not risk that," Shane said.

"That's a damn shame. I got some squirrel, about a dozen or so. That'll have to do," Daryl finished thoughtfully, tapping the walker's head with his boot. The walker's head moved, still trying to reach for new prey. Amy, watching from the trees, looked ill and swore before leaving quickly. Daryl was completely unfazed.

"Come on people, what the hell?" Shoots it square in the eye. It's gotta be the brain. Don't y'all know nothin'?" he asked, moving off toward the camp. As he made it through the trees around the perimeter, he started calling.

'Merle? Merle! Get your ass out here. Got us some squirrel! Let's do 'em up!"

"Daryl? Slow up a bit, I need to talk to you," Shane started. Daryl turned to him, bothered. "About what?"

"About Merle. There was a problem in Atlanta." Shane stopped. Daryl looked at him again, bracing himself.

"He dead?" he asked quietly.

"Not sure," Shane said.

"He either is or he ain't!" Daryl yelled, anger coursing in his blood. Why had they waited to tell him? Did they have to do it here, when everyone was gathering around to watch, like it was some kind of sideshow? How could Merle be maybe dead and maybe not?!

"There ain't no easy way to say this, so I'll just say it," Rick started. Daryl whipped around to face him and realised he had no idea who Rick was.

'Who're you?" he demanded.

"Rick Grimes." The fact that Rick said nothing but a name angered Daryl even more. He just wanted to know about Merle, he didn't want a damn relationship with Rick Grimes.

"Rick Grimes? You got something you wanna tell me?" he asked, pushing right into Rick's space. He cut a menacing figure and he knew it, but he didn't care.

"Your brother was a danger to us all, so I handcuffed him on a roof, hooked him to a piece of metal. He's still there," Rick finished. Daryl was taken aback, confounded by the absolute stupidity of this.

"Let me process this," he said softly, lifting his fingers to his temple and becoming agitated again. "You're saying you handcuffed my brother to a roof?!" His voice grew into an angry roar. "And you left him there?!"

"Yeah."

Rage poured through Daryl, right into his heart and soul. His only brother, the one thing he had left. White hot anger burst through his head and his eyes, and he launched himself at Rick, screaming. He never made it because Shane caught him around the waist and took him down. He couldn't stop the rage boiling over and he pulled his hunting knife from his belt.

"Watch the knife!" Shane said, stepping back. Daryl was back on his feet in seconds, blood rushing through him, adrenaline pumping. He slashed, but Rick easily stepped back. Daryl pushed forward and he connected with Rick for just a second before Shane again interceded and pulled him back, forcing him into a chokehold.

Carol watched from the safe zone near the RV, with everyone else. Ed was looking right over her shoulder, enjoying the violence. Carol felt bad for Daryl. She tried to imagine what it would be like if Sophia were gone, or if Dale went missing. She thought about how Lori and Carl had suffered thinking that Rick was dead. She could see plainly that Daryl was in an awful lot of pain. She wasn't sure that treating him like a caged animal was going to help. She could feel Ed's breath on her shoulder as he craned for a closer look, and she forced down a shudder.

"You best let me go!" Daryl yelled, red faced, trying to get free of Shane but starting to accept that he wasn't going to win this one.

"Nah, I think it's better if I don't," Shane said casually, making Daryl mad all over again.

"Chokeholding's illegal!" he yelled childishly.

"File a complaint. Come on man, we can keep this up all day," Shane fired back. Rick approached the two of them as Daryl stopped struggling and squinted up at him. Rick got down on one knee and came too close for comfort.

"I'd like to have a calm discussion around this topic. You think we can manage that?" Rick asked softly because repeating his question. "You think we can manage that?!"

Daryl was still furious, but he'd stopped fighting, so he wasn't surprised when Shane pushed him free and he hit the ground with a dull thud. His outburst starting to subside a bit, he decided to hear Rick out. In his heart, he knew that Merle was no fairy godmother.

"What I did was not on a whim. Your brother does not work and play well with others," Rick started. Daryl said nothing to that. He wasn't going to defend Merle's behaviour and make a liar out of himself along the way.

T Dog had stood watching things unfold and he decided to be honest. "It's not Rick's fault. I had the key. I dropped it."

"You couldn't pick it up?!" Daryl shouted to him.

"I dropped it in a drain," T Dog said heavily.

Daryl started breathing heavily, trying to keep himself in check. He stumbled to his feet, trying to work it all out in his head. "If that's supposed to make me feel better, it don't," he said, feeling completely exhausted and utterly defeated.

"Maybe this will." T Dog said, sensing that Daryl was as calm as he was going to be. "I chained the door to the roof so the geeks couldn't get at him, with a padlock. "

"It's gotta count for something," Rick added. Suddenly aware of everyone watching, aware of the theatre he was partaking in, Daryl finally bottomed out. Tears formed in his eyes and he couldn't stop them falling despite his best efforts.

"Hell with all of y'all! Just tell me where he is so's I can go get him," he choked, a mixture of upset, fear, anger and hurt.

"He'll show you. Isn't that right?" Lori said bitterly, looking right at Rick. Daryl knew that her bitterness had nothing to do with him, and he didn't give a shit about that either. He looked back at Rick, who confirmed it. "I'm going back."

Embarrassed by his outburst, and not just because he got beat in a fight,Daryl stormed past Rick to get ready. He didn't notice Carol watching him leave, biting on her lip, feeling sorry for him. Had he seen her, he would have cut right through her pity and told her to mind her own damn business.

He couldn't abandon his own kin, not without a fight. It was easier for the others, and he knew they only kept him around because he and Merle were useful. He knew that they tolerated Merle's obscene remarks and racist comments, and he knew that Merle was a nasty son of a bitch when he was high or drunk, which was often. He remembered all the times Merle had hit him as a kid, trying to force Daryl to become a real man. It had worked to some extent; Daryl was closed off, cold and hard, exactly what Merle had wanted for him. But no matter what Merle did to him, no matter how shitty Merle could be, he was still family. It just wasn't in Daryl's nature to abandon his family, no matter how often his family had abandoned him.


	2. Tell it to the Frogs Part II

A/N: Much easier to show Carol's perspective here, but I'll try to build in some of both where possible. Again, all of the dialogue is pretty much verbatim, and needless to say, I own nothing of anything Walking Dead related. Just exploring some thoughts is all. Thank you for the kind reviews; let me know if you have any suggestions. :)

**Chapter Two- Tell it to the Frogs Part II**

"Can someone explain to me how the women ended up doing all the work?" Jacqui intoned, tired of washing clothes that never seemed to be clean in the sweltering heat.

"The world ended, didn't you get the memo?" Amy rebuked gently, smiling nonetheless. Carol smiled at that too; Amy was confident and full of spark. She remembered when she was like that. She glanced behind her to see Ed, watching her, leaning against his jeep with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. Her smile cut out quickly and she looked away, returning to her washing. "It's just the way it is," she said quietly, and she wasn't sure whether she was talking about Ed or about the washing.

Carol was so tired of fighting non stop. Daryl Dixon might have freaked out when he found out his brother was stuck on a roof in walker- ravaged Atlanta, but she really did envy him his constant ability to fight and struggle.

The world had dealt Daryl Dixon a lot of shit. She knew that, because she'd met Merle, and Merle reminded her more of Ed than anyone she'd ever met before. Crude, abrasive, harsh and downright nasty, she had guessed from the way Merle dominated Daryl that the younger brother was just as tired and exhausted as she was. Only he was still fighting, and Carol really didn't feel that burning need to struggle in her gut. Carol was really, really tired.

"Merle first, or guns?" Rick asked as they headed into the city.

"Merle! We ain't even having this conversation!" Daryl said hotly. He couldn't fathom how they could see Merle as less important than guns. Well, he could. He wasn't stupid, and he didn't come down the river yesterday. He'd seen and done away with more walkers than any of them, and it was no easy thing. But Merle was his brother and he needed help. It wasn't like the walkers were going to arm themselves and form ranks; the guns could wait.

"We are!" Rick barked at him before turning to Glenn. "You know the geography, it's your call."

Glenn was logical. He didn't need to think it through too much. He knew where Merle was and he knew the layout of this part of Atlanta- and he knew that Daryl wasn't going to take "guns first" as an answer. "Merle is closest. The guns would mean doubling back. Merle first."

"I do miss my Maytag," Carol said after a few minutes of silence.

"I miss my sat nav," Andrea added.

"I miss my coffee maker, with that little drip filter and built in grinder, honey," Jacqui said, daydreaming.

"My computer. Texting," Amy mentioned.

"I miss my vibrator," Andrea said suddenly, making the other women giggle slightly. Carol looked behind her, checking to see if Ed was still watching her too closely. She decided to take the risk, and turned back to the women, before quietly making her own admission. "…..Me too."

Her confession was more of a shock than Andrea's. They knew that she was quiet and mousey and completely browbeaten and dominated by Ed; she had been the last one they would have expected to say that, and as they giggled and joked, Carol felt a tiny surge of power. She laughed right along with them, feeling a small bite of freedom for just a few seconds.

But she had risked too much and she saw trouble coming as Ed came wandering down from his jeep to find out what they were doing. "What's so funny?" he asked, but the question sounded like a threat. Andrea stayed calm, still laughing slightly. "Just swapping war stories, Ed," she said. Carol turned back to her work immediately, and Andrea didn't miss the sudden quiet that came over her.

Ed moved to stand behind Carol, watching over her shoulder again. Carol had gone very quiet, and immersed herself back into washing the clothes, trying hard to make sure Ed saw no reason to punish her.

Andrea became aware of the silence very quickly, and watched Ed circle around Carol like she was prey. "Problem, Ed?" Andrea asked sharply, feeling an ugly tension in the air.

"None that concerns you," he snapped. "And you ought to focus on your work," he barked at Carol. "This ain't no comedy club." Carol felt her stomach tighten.

In the department store in Atlanta, Daryl was taking the lead. A smell of rot and dank filth pushed through the air and he found himself facing one lone walker, a threat he saw as relatively insignificant. Despite the fact that Merle was missing, possibly dead, Daryl's life and experience kicked into action like it always did. "Damn, you are one ugly skank," he muttered, mostly to himself. Removing all emotion from the situation, he calmly raised his crossbow, aimed and fired one clean shot through a ruined, milky eye.

With Ed still hanging around, and the small happiness of the morning completely obliterated, Andrea was pissed. She rounded on Ed and stood up. "Ed, tell you what. You don't like how your laundry's done you are welcome to pitch in and do it yourself. Here," she said, tossing a shirt at him. Furious, he fired the shirt back at her, hitting her in her face. She stumbled, taken aback at the fury behind his throw.

"Ain't my job, Missy," he snapped.

"Andrea, don't." Amy begged. She had a feeling that things were going badly and going to get worse. The sun was beating down and the sky was clear and blue; it was something to be thankful for, and yet she was here listening to this and feeling awkward as hell.

But Andrea kept pushing the point. "What is your job, Ed? Sitting on your ass smoking cigarettes?" she fumed. Carol was ashen faced, nervous, jittery and downright frightened. She knew she was going to pay for this.

"Well it sure as hell ain't listening to some uppity smart mouth bitch. Tell you what," he hissed at her. "Come on, let's go!" he roared at Carol. Carol felt the familiar fear growing in her stomach, but she knew better than to fight back. She got up quickly, obeying him entirely.

"I don't think she needs to go anywhere with you Ed," Andrea warned.

"I say it's none of your business," he said, completely not focusing on Andrea at all. "Come on now, you heard me," he heckled Carol.

Andrea couldn't believe what she was seeing. They had all seen the bruises and the cuts and the way Ed bullied Carol and Sophia, but this was a whole other ball game and she didn't want it to happen. Carol moved to pass her and go to Ed, but Andrea reached out to stop her. On the verge of tears, utterly humiliated and regretting her joke earlier, Carol was only able to whisper. "It doesn't matter," she tried softly. Carol knew that she was going to have to face the music, and she just wanted it over with because then Ed would leave her alone for a while. Making him angrier was, she had learned, not a wise plan.

"Hey, don't think I won't knock you on your ass, just cos you some college educated coose," he barked at Andrea again. "Now you come on now, or you'll regret it later," he shot at Carol.

"So she can show up with some fresh bruises later, Ed?" Jacqui challenged. Ed just laughed at her, but she pressed on regardless, trying to shame him into stepping back. "Yeah we've seen them."

"Stay out of it. Now come on. Y'know what, this ain't none of y'all's business. Y'all don't wanna keep prodding the bull here, okay? Now I am done talking. Come on!" he finished, grabbing for Carol's arm. She started to move with him, reluctant, afraid, wishing that someone, anyone, would save her from this. She could feel her head pounding, blood rushing through her brain, and the world was starting to spin from her own fear. She could actually taste blood in her mouth and she knew that it wouldn't be long before that taste was real. She was positively terrified, and her hands were going cold with shock and fright.

Andrea wasn't done fighting. ""No, Carol, you don't have to-" she tried, pulling Carol back. Suddenly, everyone was shouting at once, and the jostling of a fight started to kick off. Carol looked at Ed and tried to lessen the shame by pleading with him, "Ed, I'll tell you what."

"You gonna tell me what?" he suddenly roared, tipping over the edge. "I'll tell you what!" he thundered, and lifted his fist, punching her clean across the face. She stumbled, screamed, and before she knew it the fight was in full swing, the women shouting and screaming at Ed while trying to protect her, to keep him away. But he just kept reaching for her.

"Come here! Come here!" he screeched, and suddenly that turned to "Get off me! Get off me!" Shane had arrived and grabbed him, pulling him back from the women. Shane threw him unceremoniously to the ground and bent down, pummeling Ed and channeling every bit of his own anger and bitterness through his fists. Filthy, slimy, bullying thug. Shane couldn't stop himself, and the women by the water started to call out to him. Andrea yelled at him to stop, and Carol joined in, begging Shane to please get off Ed.

Shane stopped briefly, his blood racing. He put his face close to Ed's burst, bloody eyes and made his final threat. "You put your hands on your wife or your little girl or anyone else in this camp one more time and I will not stop next time, do you hear me?" he said, his voice low and dangerous. "Do you hear me?! I'll beat you to death Ed. I'll beat you to death," he assured, breathing heavily. His eyes were dark, and it was perfectly clear that he meant exactly what he said.

Carol was apoplectic. Terrified that Ed would take this out on her when he next had the chance, and terrified that life was about to become so, so much worse, she started crying. Tears of panic rushed down her face and she kept shouting at Shane. She broke free of Andrea and ran to Ed, apologising all the way. "Oh God, Ed, I'm sorry. I'm sorry," she offered over and over again. By apologising now and caring now, she might be able to spare herself the worst of a punishment that was sure to come.

Ed and Sophia were her family. No matter how awful Ed was, no matter what he did to her, or what he said, no matter how he made her feel. In the end, she had to accept that Ed had brought her here. She had to accept that without him, she would have been left for the walkers, and Sophia would probably be dead too. He was one of the only constants in her life, no matter how degrading that life was.

Earlier that morning, she had tried to imagine how Daryl felt about his brother, a crude, cold, cunning creep of a racist scumbag who never had anything good to say, and never treated anyone with any respect- especially Daryl, and she knew that from experience. She knew the feeling of desperation that must have settled in Daryl's gut when he heard his brother had been given up for lost. Family is family, and when the world ends, if they're all you have, then you still have something to lose- and losing hurts.

Racing up the stairs, Daryl shot to the top first and only gave T Dog a few seconds to break the chain before he pushed his way forward and kicked at the door until it flew open. He ran onto the roof roaring for Merle twice. But Merle wasn't there anymore. The light outside seemed too bright in comparison to the stairwell and the darkness of the department store, and he squinted, trying to force his eyes to readjust too quickly.

As they came around the corner and faced the sight in front of them, Daryl walked closer, seeking Merle. But T Dog, Rick and Glenn hung back. They knew exactly where they had left Merle, and it was quite plain to see that Merle had taken his fate into his own hands after they left.

The saw lay on the concrete rooftop, just inches from the hand Merle had cut from his own body in order to escape. Rick's handcuffs hung, abandoned, from the pipe he had attached them to.

T Dog braced himself for the worst as Daryl started to scream. "No! No!" he raged, pacing back and forward, fury building in his blood. He could feel a wave of nausea and terror worming through his body, trying to squeeze all reason from his head.

All he could do was scream his frustration into the air, and nobody stopped him- no matter how many walkers were near.


	3. Vatos Part I

A/N: This episode is split into three parts, because it felt a little long. I had great fun with some of the moments here; it really gave me a chance to look a bit deeper. This one has a lot more Daryl, which contrasts well with the Carol focus of the last chapter. Reviews would be helpful to me; I'm currently trying to decide whether to continue this or not and feedback would be awesome in helping me to decide. :) Enjoy!

**Chapter Three: Vatos Part I**

On a roof in Atlanta, with a mild breeze pushing across the sky, Daryl's breathing was heavy, fast and frantic. He was looking at Merle's discarded hand and pacing back and forth, helpless and mad as hell. All of a sudden, he lashed out, turning on his heel and raising his crossbow, aiming it right into T Dog's face. He was fast, but Rick was just as quick and just as deadly; Daryl found himself with a gun pointing at his own head. Daryl was completely unwilling to budge, and his anger came out in his eyes as he stared right at T Dog, who refused to move and refused to back down.

"I won't hesitate. I don't care if every walker in the city hears it," Rick warned softly. Daryl came to realise in those few seconds that T Dog was full of shame for his fear getting the best of him when he'd left Merle behind. When he thought about how Merle had always treated T Dog with contempt, firing racist insults over and over again, he came around to the notion that T Dog was a lot more decent than he'd ever really given thought to before; T Dog had come back to face what he'd done. He knew that if he were in T Dog's shoes, it would be a different story.

His eyes started to burn, and the last thing he wanted to do was start crying again. He lowered the crossbow and blinked sharply a few times to clear the mist. T Dog breathed a slow breath of relief.

Daryl steeled himself in seconds and asked T Dog for a rag. Without saying a word, T Dog handed him an old bandana he had lying in one of his pockets. Businesslike and calm, though not looking forward to what he was about to do, Daryl walked to Merle's hand and picked it up.

"I guess the saw blade was too dull for the handcuff," he said thoughtfully. "Ain't that a bitch," he added, disgust crossing his features as he wrapped the hand carefully in the slip of fabric. When he walked back and put it in the backpack slung across Glenn' shoulders, the kid looked unhappy, but again said nothing. Daryl got the impression that he was half frightened, but also half understood: It was possibly the last sight he might ever have of his brother.

"He musta used a tourniquet. Maybe his belt. Be much more blood if he didn't," Daryl muttered, getting into his hunting frame of mind, thinking about Merle objectively and trying to work out what Merle would have done. He started to follow the trail of blood spatters automatically, and at that moment, unknown to him, he became a leader; the others followed him on autopilot.

Crossing the roof and stepping out the light and into the clogged up musty upper floors again, Daryl called out for Merle- "Are you in here?" He crossed the floor and found the remains of two walkers. Picking up a trail was easy to him, and it was perfectly clear that Merle had been here.

"Had enough in him to take out these two sum-bitches. One handed," he added, half to himself. Daryl had to admire that his brother had the balls to maim himself trying to survive, and still fight the filth around him. "Toughest asshole I ever met, my brother. Feed him a hammer he'll crap out nails."

His admiration was cut short by Rick, who was following behind and admiring Merle's tenacity, but was still wary about the amount of blood." Any man can pass out from blood loss. No matter how tough he is," he said, taking the lead.

Back at camp, Carol was sitting darning a shirt as best she could, trying to come to terms with her morning. She kept an eye on Sophia, watching her closely, wishing that she hadn't had to see the aftermath of the scene earlier in the morning.

Her mouth was in agony, and her cheek was on fire. So far, her face was red but no black bruises were showing through; Ed had knocked out one of her teeth and when he hit her, she had bit her tongue- hard. Her face felt ginger to touch and the inside of her mouth was swollen.

It had been horrific, waiting for Dale and Morales to come and move Ed from the lake back to their tent, where he was currently lying, feeling sorry for himself. She had cleaned his face as best she could, but every tie he hissed in pain she was ready to recoil in case he lashed out. He hadn't, and n her heart she suspected that he was too humiliated and sore to bother her right now. That suited Carol just fine. It gave her some time to think without him hanging over her.

Shane had taken an hour to himself and walked the campsite, calming down. And while word of what had happened had spread fast, nobody was talking about it, partially because they didn't know what to say about it. Some of them felt that Shane had overstepped his authority- and others felt that Shane should have finished the job. Either way, nobody bothered her about it because they were all concerned about Jim, who had been digging for hours just above the campsite, in the searing heat, with no explanation. Carol caught herself thinking that maybe he was doing her a favour, and digging her grave. She shuddered at the thought and tried to shake it off, smiling when Andrea and Amy came back with their catch of fish. She found herself feeling glad that they had put the incident with Ed out of their minds, so she smiled, but she also wished that she had some outlet like that. She felt like she was stuck, stagnant, standing still, waiting for something to happen.

As hostile as he knew the territory was, Daryl couldn't help but call out as often as he dared. "Merle?" he yelled, louder than he usually would have.

"We're not alone here, remember?" Rick reminded.

"Screw that. He could be bleeding out, you said so yourself," Daryl insisted as he moved on. He was on edge and getting more and more concerned because he knew Merle had lost a lot of blood. He stopped at a grotty and bloody stove, and his stomach did a twist. Rick reached the same place at almost the same time, and he found it hard to accept what he was seeing.

Glenn caught up and, convinced he wasn't going to like the answer, asked his question. "What's that burned stuff?"

Rick turned to him and answered. "Skin. He cauterised the stump." Glenn knew that his own disgust was mirrored quite clearly in Rick's face.

Daryl was less concerned with this; to him it wasn't pleasant, but it had been smart. "Told you he was tough. Nobody can kill Merle but Merle."

"Don't take that on faith. He's lost a lot of blood," Rick said. It was fine to reassure someone, but Rick had a feeling that Merle was more dangerous than people had let on. The behavior he saw reflected in Merle's behaviour were a cause for concern; what he could see made Daryl seem like a harmless boy- and Rick was well aware that Daryl was neither.

"Yeah? Didn't stop him from busting outta this death trap," Daryl said defensively, indicating to the broken window Rick hadn't yet seen.

"He left the building? Why the hell would he do that?" Glenn asked, bewildered and wide eyed.

"Why wouldn't he? He's out there alone, s'far as he knows. Doing what he's gotta do. Surviving," Daryl said. But in the back of his mind, he was bothered. Merle had vanished in the space of a day. Hadn't left any sign for Daryl to find him. Had he really thought Daryl wouldn't come for him? Daryl thought to the times Merle had been in prison or in juvie, and how Daryl was completely abandoned by him all the time. It felt the same this time around.

"You call that surviving? Just wandering out into the streets, maybe passing out? What are his odds out there?" asked T Dog.

"No worse than being handcuffed and left to rot by you sorry pricks," Daryl intoned, his resentment burning. He knew he was taking out his anger at Merle on them, but he didn't care. He rounded on Rick and ranted. "You couldn't kill him. I ain't so worried about some dumb dead bastard," he snapped.

"What about a thousand dumb dead bastards? Different story?" Rick said, a little sarcasm biting in his voice. What was this guy's problem?

"You take a tally. Do what you want. I'mma go get him," Daryl said, pushing past Rick, determined now to find Merle before he was left alone again. Rick reached out and gave him a gentle push back, trying to reason it with him.

"Daryl, wait."

"Get your hands off me! You can't stop me!" Daryl yelled. Glenn was peering around, wincing at the noise, conscious of the high levels of walkers in the area and their limited ammunition.

"I don't blame you!" Rick barked, putting his foot down. "He's family, I get that. I went through hell to find mine, I know exactly how you feel," he said, quieter now. Daryl looked at him, itching to admit that he felt Merle was gone, leaving him behind. Instead, he said nothing and just looked at Rick, waiting for the rest.

"He can't get too far with that injury, we can help you check a few blocks around but only if we keep a level head," Rick finished.

"I can do that," Daryl grunted.

T Dog was unimpressed by the plan. "Only if we get those guns first," he said, laying his conditions down. "I'm not strolling the streets of Atlanta with just my good intentions, okay?" Nobody argued that that. They sat down to plan.

Carol went with the others to see Jim digging, but she hung back. She knew everyone was worried, but she was too tired to think too deeply on it, and she felt Jim would make her more upset about things anyway. She had always been fond of him, he was always nice to Sophia. In the end, she stood and watched as Shane had to restrain him. "Nobody is gonna hurt you, okay?"

Jim didn't buy it for a second. "It's a lie, the biggest lie there is," he choked. "I told that to my wife and my two boys, I said it a hundred times. It didn't matter. They came out of nowhere, there were dozens of them. Just pulled them right out of my hands. The only reason I got away was because the dead were too busy eating my family," he said, defeated. Carol could see Lori staring at him, transfixed, a mixture of horror and absolute pity crossing her face. She turned and walked away to find Sophia and try to do some school work. She just didn't want to think too much about this today. It was too much sadness.


	4. Vatos Part II

A/N: Here is Vatos Part II, slightly longer than the first part. Mostly Daryl again here, though I did squeeze in what I think Carol must have ben feeling around that time, which will be really important for Wildfire. Thank you for the kind reviews and feedback, it means a lot. :) Enjoy!

**Chapter Four- Vatos Part II**

Daryl was leaning against a desk, trying to get his head around what was being suggested. For the first time, he found himself on the same side as Rick when the deputy said "You're not doing this alone," addressing Glenn.

"Even I think it's a bad idea, and I don't even like you much," Daryl added, wondering if Glenn had a death wish.

"It's a good idea, okay?" Glenn pressed. "If you just hear me out. If we go out there in a group, we're slow, drawing attention," he started, and the logic made sense. "If I'm alone, I can move fast." He reached out and set up a little map of the surrounding area to show how good his plan was. "Look. That's the tank, five blocks from where we are now. That's the bag of guns. Here's the alley I dragged you into when we first met," he said, nodding to Rick. "That's where Daryl and I will go."

"Why me?" Daryl asked, half suspicious.

"Your crossbow is quieter than his gun," Glenn said, and again, the logic was perfectly clear. Glenn was in charge and he wasn't doubting himself.

"While Daryl waits here in the alley, I run up the street, grab the bag," he continued.

"But you've got us elsewhere?" Rick asked.

"You and T Dog, right. You'll be in this alley here," Glenn said, pinpointing a place on the map.

"Two blocks away, why?" Rick pushed.

"I may not be able to come back the same way. Walkers might cut me off. If that happens, I won't go back to Daryl. I'll go forward instead, all the way around to that alley where you guys are. Whichever direction I go, I got you in both places to cover me. Afterwards we'll all meet back here."

There was a few seconds of silence, and curiosity got the better of Daryl. "Hey kid. What you do before all this?" he asked.

"Delivered pizzas," Glenn said, "Why?"

Rick had been wondering himself where Glenn acquired his tactics, and he glanced sidelong at Daryl when the answer came. Daryl half shrugged and half nodded; it was the closest thing to respect Rick had ever seen from him. It was also the closest thing to respect Daryl had ever thought he could show to Glenn. Merle's constant taunts and jibes, jokes and mean banter had led him to think less of the others in the camp. He was beginning to realise that people like Glenn, Rick and T Dog had more to them than he had first thought.

Half an hour later, Glenn climbed down the ladder followed by Daryl, while Rick and T Dog departed for the other alley. Daryl was on high alert, and he found his respect for Glenn was growing. "You got some balls for a Chinaman," he muttered as he prepared to cover Glenn.

"I'm Korean," Glenn said flatly.

"Whatever," Daryl said. To him, in truth it made no difference. Glenn was about to do something that he wasn't entirely sure he'd do himself and that was worth a lot.

Daryl ducked behind a huge rubbish bin and kept an eye while Glenn moved to the gate and looked outside, before bolting, quiet and fast. Daryl could feel the tension building in his neck and back. He was on alert, so he easily heard the sounds behind him. In one swift movement, he was on his feet and aiming his crossbow at a skinny kid who had tried to sneak up on him.

"Woah, don't shoot me! What do you want?!" the kid yelped, scared.

"Looking for my brother, he's hurt real bad, you seen him?" Daryl asked, his mind still trying to find a space for Merle in the confusion. Fury jumped through him when the kid started yelling- loudly. "Shut up, you'll bring the geeks down on us! Answer me!" he demanded.

Glenn had managed to reach the guns almost unnoticed, and he headed back towards Daryl; he hadn't been cut off and he was thankful for that and he knew that Daryl would see any threats creeping up on him as he bolted back to the gates, his heart in his mouth.

"Answer me," Daryl insisted, but the kid just kept yelling. Daryl assumed he was trying to alert others, and he knew it was a risky move with the walkers everywhere. Determined to shut him up before they all got eaten, Daryl knocked him down with his crossbow, insisting that he shut up and trying to cover his mouth. He was willing to bet that Rick and T Dog had probably already heard the shouting.

Daryl was entirely caught of guard when two men arrived into the alley and rushed him. He took a swift kick and fell back. He tried to cover his head while they both bore down on him. He tried to fight back but they turned away from him quickly because Glenn had arrived back, guns over his shoulder, and he was frozen to the spot.

"That's it! That's the bag! Take it, take it!" one of them yelled, and they ran to Glenn. Daryl wasted no time, and grabbed his discarded crossbow. He took aim and fired, his arrow hitting home. He sat up and prepared to fire again, but they had grabbed Glenn and were pulling him into a car. He could see and hear Glenn roaring for help in front of him, but he knew there was absolutely nothing he could do.

"Get back here, you sons of bitches!" he roared after the car, knowing that it would get him nowhere. He ran toward the gate and kept hollering, but eventually he had to accept the defeat and close the gate to prevent the walkers getting in. Furious, he rounded on the kid and rushed toward him.

'Woah woah woah! Stop it!" Rick yelled as he arrived with T Dog to see Daryl raging at a terrified looking kid.

"They took Glenn!" Daryl yelled. "This little bastard and his bastard homie friends! I'm gonna stomp your ass!" he fumed at the kid. In his head he wasn't too sure why he was o mad. It wasn't because he'd been hit because that hadn't bothered him in years. They hadn't taken the guns; the bag was right there in front of him. He was raging because he had a chance to cover Glenn and make sure he got from one spot to another safely. But Merle had been in his head the whole time. He was raging at himself. In the back of his mind, the thought occurred that his respect for Glenn had grown a hell of a lot in the past few hours; he was starting to like the Korean.

"We're cut off," T Dog said, snapping him out of his angry thinking.

"Get to the ladder, go!" Rick called, and Daryl followed on, pushing the boy in front of him.

Carol, Lori, Sophia and Carl were gathered around the rickety table trying to get some work done. Neither of the women wanted the kids to end up with no education, so they taught them as best they could, as often as possible.

Across the way, a calmer and relaxed Jim was tied to a tree. After a time, he called to Lori, to apologise for what had happened. "Sorry if I scared your boy, your little girl," he added, addressing Carol.

"You had sunstroke, nobody's blamin' ya," Lori said, and she found that she meant it.

"Not scared now, are ya?" Jim called to Sophia. Carol watched her as she looked up and across at Jim.

"No Sir," she said, sure of herself. Carol had expected her to be frightened of Jim, but he had only ever shown her kindness, and kindness was something her own father never gave her. Of course she wasn't going to be frightened of Jim's sunstroke. She had seen much, much worse in her short life. Carol found that thought very distressing, and she caught herself thinking, not for the first time, whether she had ever done right by Sophia.

"Your mom is right, sun just cooked my head is all," Jim called, interrupting her train of thought. He explained that he had dreamed the reason for digging, and he tried to reassure Carl that Rick would be back soon; that Rick would always come back for him. Carol watched Lori smile at that; she really valued the effort Jim was making to be reassuring and kind. Carol couldn't help but think that if Ed left, he would never come back, and she would be alone with Sophia. Earlier, she had been apologising to Ed in the hope of saving herself later pain, but she knew in her heart that if Ed were to vanish and she still had Sophia, she'd be fine and Sophia would probably end up happier. If she was still part of this camp and had these people around her, she'd be okay with Sophia. She was starting to daydream a bit, seeing a future of safety, imagining that Ed was gone.

She realised that it was a pointless daydream when she found herself thinking about safety. As a concept, it was ludicrous to think about any kind of safety. The world had ended; safety was a pipe dream. It existed for none of them. Again defeated, she looked up through the trees and breathed in and out a few times, trying to collect some solid thoughts. The sun was shining and the heat was still strong, but the shade of the trees and the leaves rustling sounded nice. They had picked a good spot and she was able to fool herself for just a few seconds that she wasn't quite as burdened as she always felt.

"Who wants to help me clean some fish, uh?" Shane called to the kids as he walked past, breaking her reverie.

"Sweet, come on Sophia!" Carl called, and the kids ran off after Shane.

"Stay with Carol!" Lori called to Carl. Carol sighed and got up to follow the kids. Lori had no idea what was going through her head, she reminded herself. Carol would have valued a little break, some quiet time to herself, but Lori wasn't to know that.

"Those men you were with. We need to know where they went," Rick stressed to the kid, Miguel.

'I ain't tellin' you nothing," he replied plainly.

"Jesus man, what the hell happened back there?" T Dog asked Daryl.- and not for the first time, which bothered Daryl. It wasn't like the details were going to change the more stupid questions he was asked.

"I told you! This little turd and his douchebag friends came outta nowhere and jumped me," Daryl said, still pacing back and forth. T Dog wasn't entirely sure if Daryl had the capacity to stand still at all, or whether moving prevented his temper from boiling over.

"Man, you're the one who jumped me. Screaming about trying to find his brother like it's my damn fault," Miguel said, derision in his voice.

"They took Glenn. Could have taken Merle too," Daryl growled.

"Merle? What kinda hick name is that? I wouldn't name my dog Merle," Miguel laughed. It took only an instant for him to realise that he had pushed it too far; Daryl was headed for him before he even knew it. Miguel got lucky because Rick had anticipated it and stopped him. "Daryl, back off!"

Furious again, Daryl stalked to the backpack and pulled out Merle's hand, still carefully wrapped. It was a spur of the moment decision, and he figured the kid needed and deserved a serious fright.

"Wanna see what happened to the last guy that pissed me off?" he asked, his tone dangerous. Miguel looked at him, completely horrified when he dumped Merle's hand into his lap. Miguel jumped from his seat, his legs gave way and he fell into the corner, where Daryl leaned close into him. "Start with the feet this time," he spat. Rick pulled him off again, impatient and pissed off at how Daryl behaved. A thought struck him, and he decided to use Daryl's behaviour to gain an advantage. If Daryl was going to be a prize asshole, Rick would play the good cop and try to coax the information he needed from Miguel.

"Men you were with took our friend," he said softly to Miguel. "All we wanna do is talk to them, see if we can work something out."

"You sure you're up for this?" Rick asked T Dog a while later, as they stood outside

"Yeah," T Dog said, though really he was pretty far from sure about the whole thing.

"Okay."

"One wrong move, you get an arrow in the ass, just to let you know, Daryl growled at Miguel as they moved into the courtyard while T Dog departed them."

"G's gonna take the arrow outta my ass and shove it up yours. Just so you know," Miguel said, bravery rising now that he was closer to home. Daryl knew false bravado when he saw it; he was an expert at it himself, so he let it slide this time.

"G?" Rick asked.

"Guillermo. He's the man here," Miguel confirmed.

"Okay then. Let's go see Guillermo." Rick intoned. He wasn't looking forward to this at all.

They walked through the empty courtyard, Daryl looking in all directions. He had a bad feeling about this entire thing, and he jus couldn't shake it off. The doors started to move as they approached, and one man walked out. Daryl sized him up, but he wasn't going to lose focus on what was around him either.

"You okay little man?" he asked Miguel. It was clear to Daryl that this was cleaerly the infamous "G."

"That guy nearly cut off my feet," Miguel burst out.

"Cops do that?" Guillermo asked Rick, unfazed.

"Not him," Miguel said, "This redneck here! He cut off some dude's hand man, he showed it to me."

"Shut up!" Daryl barked, though he was secretly quite pleased that the moment had hit home with Miguel.

"Hey! That's the one right there, the one tat shot me in the ass with an arrow man!" a voice roared as the men Daryl shot came bounding out of the doors and pointing at Daryl, who was less than concerned.

"It's true? He wants Miguel's feet?" Guillermo asked Rick, ignoring the interruption. "That's pretty sick man," he said, still calm.

"We were hoping more for a calm discussion," Rick said, wary of the shouting.

"The hillbilly jones'd Felipe's little cousin, jumps on him, threatens to cut of his feet, Felipe gets an arrow in the ass. You want a calm discussion?" Guillermo said, incredulous. "You fascinate me," he finished, his voice still level.

"Heat of the moment. Mistakes were made. On both sides," Rick said, beginning to fel uneasy as others gathered around Guillermo.

"Who's that dude to you anyway? You don't look related," Guillermo asked, still polite.

"He's one of our group, more or less," Rick said reluctantly. "I'm sure you have a few like him."

"You got my brother in there?" Daryl cut in, repeating his mantra.

"Sorry, fresh out of white boys. But I got Asian. Interested?" Guillermo said. It was clear to Daryl that they really didn't have Merle. 'White boy' certainly wasn't how a person who knew Merle would describe him. 'Racist thug" might have done it, but 'white boy' wasn't quite there. Daryl listened to the rest of the conversation in silence. He heard Rick offer a simple trade: One man for another. He listened as Guillermo argued that his people had been attacked and required compensation. Daryl felt that was a little rich since they had beaten him and kidnapped Glenn, leaving their own man behind in the process. He might have fired an arrow into someone's ass, but he figured that the guy was lucky he still had his head.

He listened wordless as Guillermo made his last play: he wanted the guns. Daryl knew Rick was far from stupid. He knew he didn't have to interrupt this one, because he knew that Rick wasn't going to give up guns he had worked so hard to keep- especially not when they were so vital.

And he was right; Rick had no intention of giving up his weapons.

"What's to stop my people from unloading on you right now, and I take what's mine?" Guillermo asked, threatening softly.

"You could do that. Or not." Rick said. Daryl had been watching T Dog on and off for a few minutes so he knew exactly where the man was if the shit hit the fan. Rick gestured upwards and everyone's eyes followed his lead, seeing T Dog perched on the roof with a sniper rifle aimed right at Guillermo's head.

Guillermo was still calm. "I see two options. You come back with Miguel and my bag of guns, and everyone walks. Or you come back locked and loaded and we see which side spills more blood," he stated. His conditions made clear, he turned and followed his gang back inside. The doors closed. The courtyard went quiet. Daryl exhaled.


	5. Vatos Part III

A/N: Watched a Season Three episode today. Hoo boy, I have a lot of character development to build in! Hope everyone is enjoying the slow burn of these two and their friendship so far. The next chapter will up the ante quite a lot, but some important things happen here and I didn't want to skip anything. Enjoy. :)

**Chapter Five- Vatos Part III**

"Guns are worth more than gold," Daryl stated. To him, there was no question. "Gold won't protect your family or put food on the table. You willing to give that up for that kid?"

Rick was surprised by Daryl's intimation that family was that important. He knew that Daryl had come all the way to Atlanta to find Merle, and was determined to do so. But he'd never really envisioned Daryl making a cogent argument for the protection of anyone else.

"If I knew we'd get Glenn back I might agree. Do you think they're just going to hand him over?" T Dog asked, disbelieving.

"Calling G a liar?" Miguel snapped.

"Are you part of this? You wanna hold onto your teeth?" Daryl raged at him, slapping him across the face with much less force than he wanted to.

"Question is, do you trust that man's word?" T Dog pressed on.

"No. Question is, what you willing to bet on it?" Daryl asked flatly. "Could be more than them guns. Could be your life. Glenn worth that to you?" Daryl asked. He knew he sounded like an asshole, but he hoped Rick would realise he wasn't saying this for no reason. He was asking an honest question. If Rick decided Glenn was worth it, Daryl wasn't going to argue the toss. He just had to be sure.

"What life I have I owe to him," Rick said. "I was nobody to Glenn, just some idiot stuck in a tank. He could have walked away but he didn't. Either will I."

"So you're gonna hand the guns over?" Daryl asked, disgusted. Was Rick actually going to give up?

"I didn't say that," Rick murmured. "There's nothing keeping you two here. You should get out, head back to camp," he finished.

"And tell your family what?" T Dog asked, running his hands over his face and wishing he was somewhere else. He knew that he'd never be able to face Lori if he showed up without Rick.

Daryl didn't move, and he didn't say anything one way or the other. He didn't even hesitate before reaching for the weapons. As he started arming himself, Miguel panicked slightly and couldn't help but yell that this was crazy. Without a word, Daryl turned to him and softly pushed him back into a sitting position.

"Just do like G says," Miguel begged. It was plain to see that the kid was shit scared, but Daryl felt little sympathy. You reap what you sow.

"I see my guns, but they're not all in the bag," Guillermo said when they approached, his gang loitering around him. It was perfectly evident that they were completely outnumbered.

"That's because they're not yours," Rick said, relentless. "I thought I mentioned that," he added quietly, almost dangerously.

'Let's just shoot these fools right now, unload on their asses," suggested Felipe, the one Daryl had shot.

"I don't think you fully appreciate the gravity of the situation," Guillermo said to Rick.

"No, I'm pretty clear. You have your man, I want mine," Rick said, shoving Miguel forward.

"I'm gonna chop up your guy, and feed him to my dogs, two of the meanest, nastiest

bitches you ever saw. I picked 'em up from Satan at a yard sale," Guillermo taunted. "I told you how it has to be, are you willfully deaf?"

'My hearing's fine," Rick stated. "You said come locked and loaded. Okay then, we're here," he finished, He, Daryl and T Dog were suddenly ready to fight. Daryl could feel his blood pulsing in his veins.

"Felipe! Felipe!" came a voice from behind the gang. It sounded like a woman- and it sounded to Daryl like an old woman. "Get that old lady outta the line of fire!" Daryl yelled when she came into view and started asking Felipe for help. It was a turn of events none of them expected, and Guillermo, disgusted that his act had been compromised, gave up.

"Felipe, go take care of it and take your grandmother with you!" he said. "Felipe, who are those men?" asked the old lady as she walked forward.

"Don't you hurt him," she begged Rick.

"Ma'am?"

"Felipe's a good boy! He have his trouble, but he pull himself together. We need him here," she continued. Rick suddenly worked out what she was talking about.

"Ma'am," he confided, "I'm not here to arrest your grandson."

"Then, what do you want him for?" she pressed.

"He's… helping us find a missing person," Rick said, figuring that a little lie wouldn't hurt. "Fella named Glenn."

"The Asian boy? Come, come, I show you!" she said, taking his hand and pulling him back behind the gang and past Guillermo. "Let them pass," he said.

She brought him back into the building he hadn't known anything about. Daryl followed quietly behind him, looking into different rooms and slowly but surely starting to forget that he was armed at all. It was plain to see that the elderly people were in far more trouble than he was going to be any time soon.

"What the hell is this?" Ricks asked Glenn really softly when they came upon him.

'Asthma attack. Couldn't get his breath all of a sudden," Glenn said quietly.

'Thought you were being eaten by dogs, man!" barked T Dog.

Rick leaned over to where Guillermo stood, aggravated at how much of a risk the man had taken with everyone's safety. "May I have a word, with you?" he asked, before pulling Guillermo aside. "You're the dumbest son of a bitch I ever knew. We walked in there ready to kill every last one of you!"

"I'm glad it didn't go down that way," Guillermo said. He started to explain what had happened and how it had happened. He explained how many threats there were now, how bad people were to one another when it was the walkers they were all afraid of.

"Guess the world changed," T Dog murmured.

"No. It's the same as it ever was," Guillermo claimed. "The weak get taken. So we do what we can here. The Vatos work on those cars, talk about getting the old people out of the city, but most can't even get to the bathroom by themselves. So that's just a dream. Still,it keeps the crew busy and that's worth something." Daryl found himself admiring Guillermo for sticking with the situation, even if it was approaching dire. These people understood family and what it meant.

"So we barred all the windows, shut all the door except for one entrance. The Vatos, they go out, scavenge what they can to keep us going. We watch the perimeter night and day and we wait. The people here? They all look to me now. I don't even know why," Guillermo finished.

"Because they can," Rick stated. He approached Guillermo and handed him his gun before returning to the bag and donating more weapons and ammunition. Daryl didn't stop him. Despite his protectiveness when it came to the weapons, he couldn't help but figure that it would be a bad thing to leave these people with no defences at all. Caught off guard, he found himself thankful for his situation for a minute; there might be idiots at the camp, but he was willing to bet that they could move fast if they had to, and there was a lot of skill accumulated there. People here, they didn't have those things to reassure them.

In the cold light of day, when they left, he found himself rethinking it. This group was going to need as much help as they could. "You've given away half our guns and ammo," he said accusingly to Rick.

"Not nearly half," Rick said, approaching where they had parked the truck earlier on.

"For what, a bunch of old farts who're gonna die off momentarily anyhow? Seriously, how long you think they got?" Daryl challenged.

"How long do any of us?" asked Rick. He was unsurprised when nobody answered, and he knew that Daryl was probably thinking about Merle. Rick had pretty much given him up for dead. A one armed man wandering a geek infested city, despite his admirable degree of gumption, wasn't where he would place any bets.

He was prevented from thinking too much about it when he realised that the truck was gone.

"Where the hell is our van?" Daryl asked, realising at exactly the same moment.

"We left it right here, who the hell would take it?" Glenn asked, bewildered.

"Merle." Rick said. There was no doubt in his mind.

It never occurred to Daryl that this meant his brother was still alive. Instead, what occurred was something completely different. He knew Merle, and he knew that if Merle took the van, there was only one place he was headed.

"He's gonna be taking some vengeance back to camp," he muttered, looking at Rick and wearing, for the first time, an expression of genuine concern. Rick realised that Daryl wasn't concerned for Merle; he was concerned for the group, for the people he'd started to respect and grudgingly to admire. All four of them started to run.

Carol was extending what she considered to be a very weighty olive branch. She wanted to play nicely with Ed for a while, hoping that it would keep things quiet and calmer, and not set him off.

"Why don't you come outside with everybody?" she asked him.

"Hell with them people. Wouldn't piss on them if their heads was on fire," Ed hissed at her. His face was yellowed and bruised, his eyes were bloated and swollen, and though he couldn't see it, an ominous red film was etched across his right eyeball.

As Sophia got up to leave the tent, he tried to coax her back. "Hey! Why don't you stay here? Keep your Daddy company?" he asked. Carol felt an ice cold dread flowing through her. She knew exactly what Ed wanted and exactly why he wanted to have her around. It was only in the past few months that he'd started to notice Sophia, and it wasn't in any decent way.

Carol looked at her daughter, and knew that Sophia didn't want anything at all to do with Ed. "Ed. She wants to join in," she said, as sharply as she dared. "Come on," she gestured to Sophia, and left the tent with her.

"Fine!" Ed roared after her. "Hell with both of you! Ain't no need to be bothering me the rest of the night!" he finished.

Carol felt that small rise of power again. She had disobeyed him and she hadn't been polite or kind to him. It was one thing to hit her, and it was one thing to beat her into submission. It was another thing entirely to target Sophia. Never once had Carol allowed Ed to hit Sophia. She'd taken more knocks for that than she cared to recall, but Sophia had always been her top priority. And Ed could be damned if he thought she'd ever allow him near her daughter. Sophia was what she had left now. Carol could feel in her heart that she was going to have to fight for her child.

They had been running for what felt like an age. Miles of road had passed, none of them spoke, and dark was falling. The fear that was in every one of them had nothing to do with the risk of walkers on the road. It had nothing to do with walkers at all. They ran because they were scared of what Merle was going to do.

Carol was, for once, sitting around the main camp fire. She felt more relaxed than she had in a long time. Whether it was the calm before the storm, she wasn't sure, but she knew that Sophia was going to need protecting and she had to be ready for that. She kept an eye on Sophia for a while, but gradually she immersed herself in Dale's story.

"I like what father said to son when he gave him a watch that had been handed down through generations. He said, 'I give you a mausoleum of all hope and desire, which will fit your individual needs no better than it did mine or my father's before me. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you may forget it, for a moment, now and then, and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it."

While Amy poked fun at Dale and his watch before departing for the bathroom, Carol found herself blinking back tears. It was like he had described her. She'd spent every day focusing on Ed, focusing on getting from A to B, trying to fit things in the best way she could and struggling non-stop. It had been going on for years. She had never had an opportunity to just live. She had never had a chance to just explore life, to learn by her own mistakes, to grow. She was so frightened of everything in her life that she was trapped in exactly what Dale had described; a mausoleum of all hopes and desires. A tomb.

A scream from Amy interfered with her thoughts, and she grabbed Sophia as the group turned to see Amy being bit not once, but twice, by walkers infesting the camp. Shane gathered her, Lori and the kids close to him, prepared to defend everyone as best he could. Everyone ran for their weapons as a herd of walkers spilled into the camp.

On the road, the screams made their blood run cold. They were close, very close. But they were obviously too late. They ran harder, and arrived at the camp in time to start shooting, hitting as many walkers as possible and as fast as they could. Daryl found himself alone, the way he liked things. Systematically firing, with a shotgun in one hand and his crossbow slung across his shoulders, he progressed through the camp.

It was over before they knew it, and the world subsided back into silence. There were quiet gasps and moans, but other than that, Daryl relished the sudden calm. Glenn was halfway to hyperventilating and T Dog was shaking with the energy rush. Rick had run to his family, causing Daryl to grimace at his own loss.

He didn't look for his brother among the dead. Daryl had absolute faith in Merle's abilities; he knew even without checking that Merle didn't die in the camp. He knew that Merle had simply not come back. He kept a lookout with T Dog on the edge of the survivors and took out some stragglers from the herd. Calm. Systematic. Exactly how Merle had taught him to hunt.


	6. Wildfire Part I

A/N: I like to think that Wildfire contains a big moment for both Carol and Daryl, when it comes to dealing with Ed's death. I took some liberties with this one as a result. To fit in the very different Daryl that's seen right from the start of Season Two, the development as we know it starts around here I think. Keep an eye out for that, it's sort of sweet to read I think.

Review and let me know how I'm doing after this one. Enjoy! :)

**Chapter Six- Wildfire Part I**

Daryl spent the night awake and alert, watching. Bit by bit he had seen the others drop off, but he, T Dog, Rick and Shane had taken it in turns to keep an eye out. In the cold light of day, he found himself with the unenviable task of putting down the walkers and the bitten. They'd lost more than their fair share of people and the camp felt broken and sick. He was the only one who was properly calm about what had to be done. They'd made an agreement to burn the bodies for absolute safety, and he was fine with that.

He was sore though. He had decided that there could be no more gunfire in case it drew more of them down on the tattered remains of their camp. He was using a pick axe to put down the dead, and he could feel his arms burning and his thighs groaning for rest, but he didn't stop. He might be sore, but he'd be a damn sight more hurt if one of the bodies got up and started moving around again.

He was agitated about Andrea, who sat silently with Amy's body. She'd already threatened Rick with a gun when he tried to approach her, to reason with her. Amy had been bitten; there was no way back. Rick had backed off when Andrea faced him down, unflinching.

"Y'all can't be serious, " Daryl said, disbelieving. Y"ou're gonna let that girl hamstring us? The dead girl's a timebomb," he stated, and there was no denying that he was right.

"What do you suggest?" Rick asked, half annoyed and half reasonable. He knew Daryl was right. They were just sitting here, waiting for a new walker to arrive in the form of Amy.

"Take the shot," Daryl suggested icily. "Clean, in the brain, from here. I can hit a turkey between the eyes from this distance," he said. Amy would die fast and clean. There'd be no mess.

"No. God sake's, let her be." Lori interjected before Rick properly thought it through. Daryl looked at Rick and then at Shane. They were awkward about this because they loved Lori, but in their hearts he knew that they agreed with him. Pissed off that they so easily shrugged off the importance of basic survival, he sloped away.

"Wake up Jimbo, we've got some work to do," Daryl addressed Jim as he walked past. Man looked like he was in a daze. Daryl reached Morales and put a hand on his shoulder to announce his arrival. He reached down to help Morales shift one of the dead campers toward the pile of bodies ready for burning.

"Hey hey, what are you guys doing?" Glenn asked, stuttering. "This is for geeks! Our people go over there!" he yelled, pointing to a spot outside the RV. His eyes were red and Daryl knew he'd had no proper sleep last night. But he wasn't too willing to deal with that. Again, common sense was more important.

"What's the difference? They're all infected." Daryl said. He wasn't being flippant, just honest, but Glenn was insistent. "Our people go in that row over there," he reiterated. "We don't burn them! We bury them. Understand?" Daryl said nothing, but he and Morales moved the body as Glenn watched them.

"You reap what you sow," Daryl muttered.

"You know what, shut up man!" Morales said, cutting him off.

Daryl couldn't understand why he was being yelled at. He knew that he was one of the only people seeing clearly today. He was the only one in the camp with vast experience of walkers because he saw them and hunted them in the woods every single day. He saw what they did to animals and to other people, and it was a future he was trying to avoid at all costs. Why were they trying to apply human logic to something that wasn't human anymore?

"Y'all left my brother for dead! You had this coming!" he barked as he stormed off. Really, it had nothing to do with Merle. But dammit, it wasn't his fault that they couldn't see the sense in what he was saying. They couldn't afford to go to pieces like this, least of all now. He stalked past Jim and Jacqui just in time to hear Jacqui saying that he'd been bit. He was one of the people who circled Jim, and he took charge of it. Hecalled to T Dog to catch Jim, then ran forward and revealed the bite in his side. "I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine," Jim said over and over. But Daryl backed away. Nobody was fine.

Ten minutes later, he was stuck in the middle of a debate about what to do about Jim not being fine. "I say we put a pick axe in his head, and the dead girl's and be done with it," he put plainly.

"That what you'd want? If it were you?" Shane asked him.

"Yeah," Daryl said with total honesty, "And I'd thank you while you did it."

"I hate to say it, I never thought I would but maybe Daryl's right," Dale sighed. He couldn't believe he was saying this; neither could anyone else.

"Jim's not a monster Dale, or some rabid dog," Rick said, trying to get his point across.

"I'm not suggesting-"

"He's a sick, sick man," Rick continued, talking over Dale. "We go down that road, where do we draw the line?" he questioned.

"The line's pretty clear," Daryl intoned. "Zero tolerance for walkers, or them to be," he said definitively.

"What if we can get him help? I heard the CDC was working on a cure." Rck was grasping at straws, trying to find another way out of this. "I heard that too," Shane said, but continued, "Heard a lot of things before the world went to hell."

"What if the CDC is still up and running?" Rick suggested, the pipe dream forming in his head." Man, that is a stretch right there," Shane said. They all wanted some good for the world, but it was so unlikely.

Daryl gave Rick the time of day on this; he felt the desperation and the frantic need to find a solution. Rick was suggesting that it was a good shot; there'd be food, shelter and protection. There might even be a cure. Daryl thought about it, but it seemed so vague.

"If those things exist, they're at the army base, Fort Benning," Shane said.

"That's a hundred miles in the opposite direction," Lori gasped."That is right. But it's away from the hot zone," Shane suggested. "Now listen, if that place is operational, it'll be heavily armed. We'll be safe there."

'The military were on the front lines in this thing," Rick said. "They got overrun, we've all seen that. The CDC is our best choice, and Jim's only chance," he concluded.

Daryl turned around and looked at Jim, who looked back almost shyly. He knew exactly what they were talking about and he just sat there, waiting for his fate to arrive.

"You go look for some aspirin," he started mildly. "Do what you need to do. Somebody needs to have some balls and take care of this damn problem!" he burst out, running toward Jim with his axe raised. He stopped before he ever got there. Part of him just wanted to see what Jim would do in response. But he also knew he couldn't go through with it, no matter how right he felt it was, because there was Rick, pointing a gun at him again.

"We don't kill the living," Rick said, threatening him.

"That's funny, coming from a man who just put a gun to my head," Daryl sneered. He neglected to add that this would be the second time.

"We may disagree on some things. Not on this. You put it down. Go on," Shane said. Daryl gave in, and stalked off. Stupidity was going to get them killed. They needed rules, leadership, proper thought. Emotions were running too high; they were getting in the way, and he didn't see that as a solution.

A while later, after he retrieved his axe, he went to finish the last of what needed to be done. He had been avoiding this one for a few hours, hoping that somebody else would have the grace to cover it, but they didn't and he wasn't the type to shy away from something so he decided to get it over with.

Ed Peletier had died during the night. Daryl hadn't noticed the missing people when he first arrived back at camp, but it had become clear as the night wore on and some people simply didn't join the group huddled near the RV. He didn't know their names very well because he and Merle had stuck together to the exclusion of others, but he knew the numbers had dwindled. Andrea had been unable to cope with Amy's death, and there were others too; family members had reluctantly come to accept throughout the night that they simply hadn't made it. They had managed, as a group, to patch together what had happened and who was lost.

He was taking the last watch before he knew people would start getting up and trying to move on. The sun was beginning to stir on the horizon, and it was and always had been one of his favourite times of day. It always gave a sense that the world was new again, and even though he knew that was horseshit, there something about the very early morning that always made him feel a little more alive. He had a shotgun braced against the back of his neck, his elbows settled around it, and he was deliberately making himself uncomfortable in order to stay awake as he watched the perimeter of the camp.

Dank light started to eke its way across the world, and he glanced back at the survivors of the night. He knew that this silence, when everyone was asleep or quietly shaking or crying, wouldn't come again for a time. He was surprised though, to see two eyes open and looking at him. He recognised that it was Carol and said nothing, but instead glanced down at the exhausted little girl asleep, lying in her arms.

Daryl and Merle had stuck together, and they weren't great with the names of the people in the camp, but they knew Carol, Ed and Sophia. They knew those names for all the wrong reasons.

Daryl glanced back up at Carol and raised an eyebrow in her direction, just a fraction. Where was Ed? She hadn't mentioned him at all throughout the night. As he watched her, she looked back at him and softly, gently shook her head ever so slightly. Ed had bit the dust.

The sun was bearing down hard, and Daryl felt his bones and muscles aching as he stood in front of what was left of Ed Peletier. The man had gotten an awful death, and Daryl saw no reason to be sorry for that. Seeing Carol emerge from their tent every morning with new bruises and new shame had been difficult for everyone to watch, but it had been especially hard for Daryl. Merle made out that he didn't care and often passed crude jokes and filthy comments with Ed, but Daryl remembered the beatings they took at home just fine. In fact, Daryl remembered the beatings even more than Merle did, because Merle frequented prisons so often that Daryl was often entirely alone in a house of horrors.

He looked down at Ed and felt his blood curdle. Daryl might have been hard, and cold and rough around the edges. He was crude but he was honest, and he said what he meant plainly, even if it made him unpopular. He had always had bigger things to worry about than unpopularity, so it didn't matter to him. But cold and withdrawn as he could be, he'd spent enough time being beaten up and torn to pieces by his own father, and his coldness couldn't hide that past. Striking out with the axe, he buried the blade deep in the brain of the walker lying beside Ed's corpse. Whether necessary or not, he did it because he had to start somewhere.

He moved to the side and raised his axe, preparing to bring it down on Ed's head. And that was when Carol arrived in front of him and walked down to meet him. She was looking at Ed, and Daryl was looking at her. He lowered the axe and looked at her for the few seconds she waited before saying what she'd come to say.

"I'll do it. He was my husband," she choked out.

Daryl said nothing at all, and willingly passed her the axe without any remark or change of expression. He knew what she was doing, and he understood the closure she sought. Who was he to take that away from her? Maybe nobody else would understand, and maybe Carol would never know, but he handed her the axe because it was her closure, not his.

Even as he handed it to her, and even though he knew there was no other work for him to do in that small, secluded, quiet part of the camp, he made the decision to stay with her.

He watched her struggle with the weight of the axe, but she persevered and lifted it. She choked out a few tears and suddenly brought the weight of the axe down hard, driving it right into Ed's face and releasing a crimson rush onto the dry ground. Daryl watched her, feeling a tension rise in his neck and shoulders, a persevering anger that he had carried for years. Why did some people have to suffer like this? If Carol had had anything near the life he had, he could understand that she felt sad because part of her family was gone, but he expected that the release she was likely to get from destroying Ed in her own way would be liberating.

He looked at her as she pulled the axe out with a rough yank and then brought it down hard again.

On the third time her face was contorted and she was angry when she struck. Daryl could see the conviction in her body and he understood her purpose. One strike would have been enough and three was beyond sufficient, but she raised the axe again and brought it down for the fourth time, her fury pulsing into the weapon. All Daryl could do was keep an eye on her as she fought for her own release.

The fifth time she hit Ed was the last, and the dull thud was the loudest. She stopped and lowered the axe in her hand. She huddled her shoulders and tried to regulate her breathing.

She hadn't had time to think before she did it, or during. She hadn't even planned to do it. She had happened to arrive when Daryl was preparing to finish with Ed, and she knew she couldn't let the opportunity fly by. She had seen Daryl watching her some days in camp, and though he never mentioned the bruises it was plain to her that he hadn't liked Ed. Merle had hung out with Ed a few times, but Daryl seemed to have reasons not to. She didn't read into that, just figured that Daryl knew Ed was a ferocious bully.

She appreciated him staying near her while she finished what she had to do. He didn't interfere, didn't suggest anything, didn't say anything, didn't offer anything. He was just there. In that moment, she wanted him to come over to her and make her feel better, to reach out in some way and to stop her from feeling so totally, completely and entirely alone. She wanted to hold onto someone and cry until all the pain was gone, but she knew too that it was better for her that she bear this burden alone. That was the idea of taking back freedom, she figured.

The first time she'd hit Ed, she felt the burn in her arms at the weight of the axe, and she was wobbly. It didn't make her feel powerful, so she hit him again with more force. It felt better. The third time, she felt her hands burn slightly against the wooden handle as she gripped it, and the fourth time she poured every spark of rage she had into her swing. The fifth time was for Sophia. At the end, she'd huddled over and broke down, crying. The adrenaline rush kicked in and she started to shake, but in her heart, Carol felt a relief she had never known before.

Daryl did nothing but watch her. In his heart, the boy he had been wanted to go to her and give her a hug, but he had grown into a different man and the hardness in him prevented it. He admired her courage and her strength; she had found it hard, but she did it anyway and she accepted things as they were. He wanted to tell her that it would be fine now; he wanted to wrap his arms around her and stroke her back and try to reassure. But he just couldn't make himself do it, he'd feel awkward and look foolish. Instead, he just stayed near her, waiting patiently.


	7. Wildfire Part II

A/N: Please review and let me know if this is working out. Enjoy. :)

**Chapter VII- Wildfire Part II**

Daryl managed to inherit the unfortunate job of transporting the bodies for burial, but again, he didn't complain. Things were the way they were and that was that. But he had a bone to pick about the burial arrangements in the first place.

"I still think it's a mistake, not burning these bodies," he said to Rick and Shane. "It's what we said we'd do. Right? Burn them all? Wasn't that the idea?"

"At first," Rick said.

"Chinaman gets all emotional, says it's not the thing to do, we just follow along?" Daryl pushed the point. "These people need to know who the hell is in charge here, what the rules are," he said. He knew he was right; they couldn't go on like this; the camp last night had been a nightmare scenario and they needed to have procedures, watches, proper care, or else they'd not survive at all.

"There are no rules." Rick stated flatly.

"Well that's a problem," Lori interrupted. "We haven't had one minute to hold onto anything of our old selves, we need time to mourn and we need to bury our dead. It's what people do," she finished. Daryl understood her point of view, and fell silent. But he still knew he was right.

At the burial, Carol watched Andrea struggle with Amy's body. She could feel the intense sadness and unending grief rolling off Andrea's shoulders. She figured that without Dale, Andrea probably wouldn't have made it through the day at all. She stood behind Sophia, watching the other bodies go down, glad that at least Sophia would know what happened to her father and get a chance to say goodbye. She hadn't cried, hadn't given out at being cooped up in the RV all day while everything was cleared up. She hadn't asked nor said anything about her father, and she didn't get emotional at the funeral. Neither did Carol. She was exhausted now, tired in her bones, but she also felt that things would get easier now. The only tension in her life would be caused by walkers and there were people here with her who could deal with them. She found herself thinking of Daryl, and how he'd helped her silently earlier in the day.

She was unsurprised when the group converged to have a long conversation about what to do next. She had arrived to the funeral site just as Daryl pointed out the need for rules and leadership, and he was right about that. Jim was a concern, and Rick made a play that they aim for the CDC. He suggested that there could be a cure, food, shelter, safety. Shane was willing to go with the plan, and everyone was still shellshocked. It was clear that they had to go somewhere, and that plan seemed at least to be cogent and thought through. Nobody else had done too much thinking beyond their grief.

Carol had spent the night worried for her friends who had died and for her daughter's future, and on this day she lost more friends. Morales and his family decided to head for Birmingham; that was a hard blow for Carol because they'd been good to her and to Sophia. Their daughter Eliza had kept Sophia company a lot, and before she left, she gave Sophia her doll. Carol found herself crying a few tears because it was such a lovely gesture, but she wished them all the best with a smile on her face, and hoped that her own future would be alright with Rick. For a second, she debated asking if she could join Morales, but she looked around and saw Daryl, Rick, Dale and Lori, and she couldn't do it.

When Morales decided to leave, Rick and Shane parted with a gun and some ammo for him, which bothered Daryl, but he said nothing. He'd gotten used to Morales, and had no problem with him. Man had a right to defend his family, even if it meant they were losing ammunition.

The group moved pretty much immediately, leaving their dead on the hillside and driving into the afternoon, knowing that they had to beat nightfall and feeling slightly refreshed by the breeze pushing through their car windows.

Daryl drove alone n his truck, with Merle's bike propped up in the back. He hadn't the heart to leave it behind. It was the last bit of Merle he had now. He was near the back of the group of vehicles as they drove, and he relished the silence. It was easy for everyone to forget about him because he didn't endear himself so easily to the group. Nobody had asked how he was or what he was thinking- and he understood why. The truth was that he was just so tired he couldn't think at all. He was tired right down to his soul. His joints ached and his muscles creaked. Various old injuries had started to burn in his body again, and in that moment, he begged in his head for a break. Some small refuge, just for a little while. He liked the quietness of this new world, and he relished the peace as he drove alone, eating up miles. He enjoyed the tremble of his truck under him, and felt a little more free than he had in the past few days. There was just so much to take in, even before he got to thinking about Merle. H caught himself thinking about Carol and Sophia. He wasn't sure he'd done the right thing, letting her work the situation out on her own. He'd stayed there just to make sure she could do what she sought to, and he admired her that she had the strength to pull it off. He had been silent because there was nothing he could possible say to make it better. Even had he explained to her that he understood more than anyone else ever would, it would have made no difference. He knew from experience that different people worked things through in different ways.

Later in the day, after the RV had broken down and had to be fixed, Jim decided what he wanted. Jim wanted to be left behind. The group stood in a circle trying to rationalise it and make a solid decision. Daryl contributed nothing, knowing that Jim and he were finally on the same page. Dying like that was no way to die at all.

Carol, for her part, standing right next to Daryl, was nonplussed. "And he's lucid?" she asked Rick after he explained the situation.

"He seems to be, I would say yes," Rick said quietly.

"Back in the camp, when I said Daryl might be right and you shut me down, you misunderstood," Dale said. "I would never go along with callously killing a man. I was just gonna suggest that we ask Jim what he wants. I think we have an answer," he finished. Daryl hadn't ever argued that they down a man who stood a chance. But the extra hours Jim had lived had filled him with pain and suffering, and put them all at risk. Daryl couldn't justify that, and he was glad that Jim had reached a conclusion that would bring some peace to his last hours.

They lifted him to a tree and rested him against its trunk. The sun was high in the sky and the breeze was a slice of paradise on his hot skin. For him, it was freedom.

Carol said her goodbyes and then left quickly with Sophia. As it was, she was the last to depart before Daryl, who stood for a moment and looked at Jim before nodding his last respects. Jim looked back at him, and there was no animosity, no vitriol, no hate. Daryl turned and walked away, abandoning him to a hard death.

The CDC towered above them as the sun started to fall away under the earth. It wasn't what they had expected. Bodies were piled for miles around it and the smell was simply horrific. Rotting corpses, dead skin and the pale coppery smell of blood hung in the air.

Daryl found himself at the edge of the group, keeping an eye. This felt wrong and there was no denying that. He gathered that it wasn't quite the panacea solution they had all hoped for. After all, if there was hope, these people probably would have been saved, or at least not abandoned.

He moved the group along, watching Carol and Sophia and making sure nobody got disconnected as they approached the door. Banging for attention there led them nowhere. There was no sign of life.

"There's nobody here." T Dog said, nervous. The sun was going down and they were too close to too many walkers.

'Then why are these shutters down?" Rick asked. He rationalized that if they had all fled and there was nobody left, the shutters wouldn't be so carefully put down.

"Walkers!" Daryl called, shooting down one who came too close.

"We made a call!" Shane said, but before he could continue, Daryl's anger burst through.

"It was the wrong damn call!"

"Shut up! You hear me, shut up! Shut up!" Shane fired back at him, incensed. "Rick, this is a dead end." Rick was still banging on the door, drawing more walkers with the noise, convinced that he couldn't have been so wrong.

"Where are we gonna go?" Carol asked loudly, feeling weak and exposed. This was far, far worse than the campsite. They couldn't stay here.

"Do you hear me?" Shane said to a wordless, expressionless Rick, "No blame."

"She's right, we can't be this close to the city after dark," Lori interjected.

"For Benning. Rick, it's still an option." Shane pushed. Rick wasn't responding.

"On what? No food, no fuel? It's a hundred miles," Lori said, growing worried.

"125, I searched the map," Glenn said, knowing there was no hope. Walkers were still coming, and though they weren't overtaking the group, the danger was clear.

'Forget Fort Benning, we need answers tonight, now!" Lori demanded.

"We'll think of something," Rick said weakly. Lori looked at him, disbelieving. She felt herself being moved as everyone headed back to the cars on the road. They'd have to move, but nobody knew where to. How could they think of something in the middle of the night on a pitch black road surrounded by the dead? This wasn't an option! Panic started to rise in them as they moved, but Rick stayed behind, looking at the door.

He saw the camera move. He started to shout, even when they told him he was wrong. He roared that they were going to die, that they needed help, that they were desperate. Even when Shane came to grab him and lift him away, he fought it and kept shouting, begging for mercy.

The doors opened, and an unnatural light shone out. Daryl lowered his gun.


	8. TS-19 Part I

A/N: I've taken some liberties with some omissions here. Carol and Daryl don't feature in parts of the episode that I really wanted to see them in because I wanted to gauge their thinking after they arrive at the CDC, and the show didn't give too much of a chance at that. Let's see if you can spot the changes!

Please review and let me know how I'm doing with this; thank you so much to those of you who do! It makes my days super special! Enjoy the chapter! :)

**Chapter 8- TS-19**

The relief in the group was audible as the light continued to shine. They clattered through the doors and a wave of freedom hit them. There were no walkers in here; never had been. It still smelled clean and safe, and the dirty low smell of rot was gone.

"Why are you here, what do you want?" asked the man with the gun who stood ready to open fire if he had to.

"A chance." Rick was plain about it.

"That's asking an awful lot these days," the man suggested.

"I know," Rick said, unwilling to fight because he was just too tired. He hoped that would work in hs favour.

"You all submit to a blood test, that's the price of admission."

"We can do that," Rick said, triumphant.

In the elevator, Daryl realised what was bothering him about the situation. The man had introduced himself as Dr. Edwin Jenner. "Doctors always go around packing heat like that?" Daryl asked suspiciously.

"There were plenty left lying around," Jenner said, "I familiarised myself. But you look harmless enough. Except you," he directed to Carl, jokingly. It lessened the tension for Carl, but not anyone else. There was silence for the rest of the elevator ride. When they left the elevator, they were in a long corridor that never seemed to end.

"Are we underground?" Carol asked as they walked.

"Are you claustrophobic?" Jenner asked, seeming to anticipate the problem.

'A little," she admitted, very reticently. In truth, she was more than just a little claustrophobic. She didn't like being in a car for too long with the windows closed, and the RV occasionally forced a real sense of foreboding into her bones. She spent as much time as possible outside, and right now she was feeling undermined and overwhelmed. Her head was making her think that she was suffocating, no matter how many big breaths of air she took.

"Try not to think about it," the Doctor suggested, unhelpfully. She looked up at the lights, trying to trick her mind into thinking the sun was closer than it really would be. She tried to breathe in and out regularly. She didn't notice Daryl watching her as she tried and tried and tried to adjust to her new surrounds. Daryl was a fan of the outdoors because it felt like home and because he understood it, but also because it had provided him with sanctuary, safety and freedom constantly when he was a child. He wondered if her claustrophobia was connected to the overwhelming presence Ed had been in her life. Not for the first time, he felt that pang of loathing for Ed Peletier.

Minutes later, when Andrea nearly passed out after the blood test, Jacqui confided to Jenner that none of them had eaten in days. Daryl felt partially to blame for that; he had always provided food and hadn't in the recent past because so many other things had happened. Still, he nonetheless appreciated the chance to strike out a little and cut loose. It had been so long since they'd had safety that the danger had them permanently on edge. He realised in that moment that even when people had laughed in the camp, it had never lasted too long; there was always something else around the corner. For the first time, he felt part of the group properly.

He got particular enjoyment out of Carl trying wine, which made everyone else laugh just as much. "Stick to soda pop there, little bud," Shane said fondly when Carl spat it out and said it was disgusting.

"Not you Glenn," Daryl joked, and Glenn looked up, red rushing to his cheeks. "You keep drinking. I wanna see how red your face can get," Daryl finished, leading to another bout of giggles around the table. For once, Shane was the buzzkill, when he started questioning Jenner about what had happened and where it had come from and what was to be done about it. For once, Daryl had started to enjoy himself, and he wasn't alone. Carol hadn't had fun in a long time, and the dinner made her shoulders relax slightly and her neck tension ease the smallest bit. A few days of this and she'd feel much better, she was sure.

Later, they were led to rooms farther into the facility. Some things weren't working any more and power was at a premium, but to them it was a paradise.

"If you shower, go easy on the hot water," Jenner said

"Hot water?" Glenn asked, a triumphant smile lighting up his face. It had been so, so long since there'd been any hot water in their lives.

Privacy and space hadn't been part of any of their lives for months. The freedom to get under the hot water and just feel what had to be felt, and to deal with what had to be dealt with, was a big draw for everyone in the group. Lori relished the dirt and grime washing away from her skin, and she relished the moments of happiness when Rick came to join her. Shane, for his part, dealt with his emotions by drinking. Andrea found herself unable to deal with her situation and she sat in the cubicle with her arms wrapped around herself, crying for solace. Everyone had their thing to deal with.

After Sophia showered and Carol had left her in the rec room with Carl for a while, asking Dale to keep an eye on them, she aimed for the showers too. She was one of the last in because she had been minding Sophia, and she found herself aching for the hot water and the sheer release of ten minutes alone.

She found a white towel and turned on the hot tap, peeling her trousers and shirt from her skin, feeling the actual soreness of the dirt that had built itself into her since the dead started walking. Hugging herself tightly, she stepped under the water and pushed her face up, feeling the stream of warmth rush down her face and body. It was like heaven. She lifted her arms and felt the water run down her fingers, clearing away the dirt and relaxing her bones. She turned her back to the stream of water and the tension in her neck started to loosen for the first time in months.

Despite the situation, and the horror that waited for her outside, Carol started to hum as she cleaned, scrubbing through her hair and massaging her own arms and legs, trying to force the heat into her blood as best she could, to empty the weariness that had hounded her for too long. She wasn't humming anything in particular that she recognised, and it had been so long since she heard music that she wasn't sure she could recognise any tune to it at all, but it was very liberating to be able to just sing for no reason. Ed was gone and she was free of him. Nobody would ever be able to beat her again, and she'd never allow Sophia to make her mistakes. She felt that she had some friends in the group now, and that she could stick with them and make a family worth fighting for- Rick and Lori were very close to her heart, and she found herself thinking about how Daryl, for all his tantrums, had waited patiently, quietly, while she finished with Ed just a day before. She caught herself thinking that there was maybe more to Daryl than met the eye, and that his rough edges might hide something worth seeing and knowing. She was somewhat surprised to find that she counted him as a friend too.

For his part, Daryl was the very last person to hit the showers. There were a few reasons for that, and one of them was that he didn't want anyone to see him too closely. The marks on hos body were old but they were still there. And while he wasn't really ashamed of them, he didn't want to talk about them.

The first thing he noticed when he reached the showers was that he was sore. His bones ached and his muscles cried out for some relaxation, but he had never been very good at taking things easy. He knew that he was sore from the constant fighting, the shooting, the axe and the burials. He was exhausted from physical work, and given that he had spent his entire life doing some form of physical work or another, it surprised him. The muscles he had built up over time were stronger in reality than they had been before, but he was so bone tired and soul weary that his own body was begging him to just stop. He knew that feeling, it had happened to him before on a smaller scale after a long trek in the woods.

The water hit his skin and he winced, flinching against its heat and the feeling of it on his skin. He pushed his hands against the cubicle wall and let the water run down his back. Knots unknotted and blood washed away. He groaned softly when the heat built up, relishing the feeling of his blood working and moving around again. When he turned to face the water and clear the dirt and sweat from his arms and shoulders, he heard a quiet voice humming in the cubicle that he assumed was next to his. It was hard to tell over the noise of the water, but he was sure it was Carol. He found himself smiling as the water hit his face. If she was singing, that meant she was doing fine, and for some bizarre reason, he was happy for her. He let out a small gasp when the water opened a healing wound on his shoulder, and noticed that the humming stopped immediately. He was furious with himself.

Carol heard a small sigh and knew that she was sharing some pretty intimate space with Daryl. She caught herself blushing, since she'd just been thinking about him, and she stopped singing, self-conscious now that she knew he might hear her. She hopped out of the shower shortly after that, leaving him with his own thoughts.

The following morning, true to Daryl's suggestion, Glenn was suffering from a nasty hangover- and Glenn wasn't alone. Shane was sore and had hurt himself in the middle of the night- though Carol wasn't sure she believed that story- and Rick was trying to speak slowly and quietly in the hope that everyone else would do the same and spare him the worst of his headache.

Once breakfast was finished, they gathered with Jenner to hear the truth of what had happened to civilization in just a few short weeks.

"Few people ever got a chance to see this," he started, passing n front of the screen and projecting an image of a human bod onto it. "Very few."

"Is that a brain?" Carl asked, interested.

"An extraordinary one," Jenner assured, "Not that it matters in the end. Vi, Take us in for the IV."

"Enhanced Internal View," the computer responded, and the screens zoomed into the brain of the human outline. They all watched, transfixed.

"What are those lights?" Shane asked, echoing a question Daryl himself wanted answered. The tickling, tender, silent lights in the brain were beautiful.

"It's a person's life. Experiences, memories. It's everything. Somewhere in all that organic wiring, in all those ripples of light, is you, the thing that makes you unique and human," Jenner said.

"You don't make sense, ever?" Daryl asked, but he wasn't being aggressive. He wanted to understand. This was the crux of what they faced and he wanted to see it, to know it, and to face it with a new type of comprehension.

"Those are synapses," Jenner qualified. "Electric impulses in the brain that carry all the messages. They determine everything a person says, does or thinks from the moment of birth…. to the moment of death."

"Death?" Rick asked. "This what this is, a vigil?" he asked.

"Yes. Or rather, the playback of the vigil," Jenner said softly.

"This person died?" Andrea asked. "Who?"

"Test Subject 19. Someone who was bitten and infected and volunteered to have us record the process. Vi, scan forward to the first event."

"Scanning to first event," came Vi's robotic voice.

The lights began to flicker and go out in the brain.

"What is that?" asked Glenn, almost holding his breath.

"It invades the brain like meningitis. The adrenal glands hemorrhage, the brain goes into shutdown, then the major organs. Then death. Everything you ever were or ever will be, gone," he said. The lights were totally out, the body lying still.

Daryl felt a lump in his throat that he had to push down. Somehow, he had never quite thought of death in this way. It had always seemed so perfunctory and baseless to him. But this was devastating and beautiful, all in one.

"Is that what happened to Jim?" Sophia asked her mom. "Yes," she said. Carol found herself getting upset for just a moment; Sophia hadn't asked about Ed; had never once said anything about Ed since the night he died. Carol vowed to talk to her about it, to make her understand.

"Scan to the second event," came Jenner's voice.

"Scanning to second event," Vi stated.

"The resurrection times vary wildly, we have reports of it happening in as little as three minutes. The longest we heard of was eight hours. In the case of this patient it was two hours, one minute…. and seven seconds." It was perfectly clear that this person was someone he'd known.

As they watched and quite without warning, a red light burst through the brain, and the body started to move again.

"It restarts the brain?" Lori asked, confused and saddened. It was an awful fate.

"No, just the brain stem. Basically it gets them up and moving," Jenner said.

"But they're not alive." Rick attempted to qualify. It was important to him that this point be qualified. If they had been out there, killing people with souls and memories…

"You tell me," Jenner said.

"it's nothing like before. Most of that brain is dark," Rick said, thinking on it carefully. He didn't want to jump to conclusions.

"Dark, lifeless, dead. The frontal lobe, the human part, that doesn't come back. The you part. Just a shell driven by mindless instinct," the scientist confirmed.

Silently, a sweeping pulse interrupted the brain and forced its say through the skull- and the lights suddenly went out.

"God, what was that?" Carol asked. But Daryl knew, and so did Andrea.

"He shot his patient in the head. Didn't you?" she asked.

"Vi, power down the main screen and the work stations," Jenner said, not answering her. Daryl looked totally lost and upset, and his thoughts confirmed it. They had been real people, even if the properties that made them human were irreparably damaged. For the first time since the outbreak, he felt sad for the fate of mankind.

"You have no idea what it is, do you?" Rick asked, and Jenner confirmed that. They talked about the desperation of their situation, but he said that communications were gone and there was nothing left anywhere. If there was, he wouldn't know.

The world really had ended.

"Man, I'm gonna get shit faced drunk. Again," Daryl intoned, rubbing his eyes to prevent that mist from catching up to him. This was far, far worse than he had thought it would be- but then, he had survived the past few months by not thinking about it too much at all.

Dale had one more question, and asked about the clock that was counting down on the wall, and wondered what it was counting down to. It was a clock Daryl hadn't even registered. The answer Jenner gave was too much to bear.

"The basement generators, they run out of fuel." He said casually.

"And then?" Rick asked. Jenner walked away, and left them. "Vi, what happens when the power runs out?" Rick pressed. The others were watching, beginning to feel a sense of foreboding. Daryl knew that they answer wasn't going to be a good one.

"When power runs out, facility wide decontamination will occur."


	9. TS-19 Part II

**A/N: This is the last chapter of this story! Yay! If I do decide to continue this, it will be in a new story to cover season 2 and a new one again for season 3, but I haven't decided yet. Thank you so much for your kind words and reviews, this was extremely interesting to write! Enjoy the last part. :) **

**Chapter Nine- TS-19 Part II**

Rick, Glenn, T Dog and Shane went to the basement to see exactly what the situation with the generators was. They had been so convinced that they were safe, and then all of a sudden it seemed to be taking a bad turn. All they needed was a little more rest and relaxation, and then, Rick was sure, they'd be able to cope again.

Daryl stayed behind as they explored the basement. For once, he realised that he needed to face his own thoughts and work his own stuff out. He'd run away from things for so long that it had been conditioned into him, and when the world ended he just accepted it for what it was and took to the road with Merle.

Now he had to face the simple fact that the world was lost, and there was little good to be had out there. He had to accept that the group he was with were decent people, bent on rightness and protection, solid in their foundations of family and love. How he fitted into it, he wasn't sure, and that made him feel lonely. For the past few weeks he had been hard, cold and unapproachable, but seeing how the world had ended, how so many lives had been ripped apart, he couldn't help but feel that he needed to do better.

He had justified his presence through his hunting and tracking skills, and had provided a solid caretaker position in the group. He was no leader, or at least that was what he thought, and he didn't want to be the centre of attention. With Merle gone he was free to be himself and to get to know other people without the taunts and jibes. As a kid he had managed to make some friends in his neighbourhood, even if they all had things he didn't and seemed happier than he had been. Making friends had been hard but not impossible, and the loneliness was starting to get to him now. He realised that he stayed near Carol when she dealt with Ed for her sake, and not for his. It had been a long time since he'd made a conscious decision like that for another person. Nonplussed and totally unsure of what he was going to do with this brave new world, Daryl returned to the bottle he had nicked from the dinner table last night, and vowed to get drunk again, and just forget for now.

For her part, Carol stayed behind with Sophia and brushed her hair through a number of times. She knew that Sophia needed to hear some things about her father and about Carol herself, and there was no better time than now. She tried to explain to Sophia that Ed had never been a good man, but that he had provided for them, and that he had made sure that they made it away from the home they had shared when the outbreak started. He had prevented the walkers from getting them, and that was something she would always be thankful for. She told Sophia that she hoped that gratitude would also be in her heart. She said that God had taken Ed elsewhere and that it had been painful but fast, and that Ed had never become a walker. She didn't say why that was the case. Carol told Sophia that if ever she had questions about her father, or wanted to talk about him, she could. When she was finished, Sophia gave her a hug and they settled down with a book.

Carol was thinking, while Sophia read aloud, that the world had truly been reduced to waste and that these people were her family now. She would stick with them and help where she could, as often as she could. It had been very sad to watch TS-19 die and resurrect and then die so violently the second time round. She remembered the looks of faint disgust and reprehension on Daryl's face and on Rick's. This was no easy place to live anymore. There were hard decisions to make and you needed support to help you make them. It was then that the lights started to flicker, and finally went out. Sophia was frightened of the dark and clutched Carol, who aimed for the door and stuck her head out.

"Why is the air off? And the lights in our room?" she asked, stepping into the corridor and seeing Jenner walk past.

"What's going on? Why is everything turning off?" Daryl echoed, a bottle dangling from his hand as he came into the hallway too. Carol looked at the bottle and felt a little concerned. Clearly, TS-19 had bothered Daryl much more than he had originally let on.

Jenner took the bottle from him as he strode past. 'Energy use is being prioritised," he said tonelessly.

"Air isn't a priority, and lights?" Dale asked, emerging into the hallway and trying to engage with Jenner.

"It's not up to me," Jenner said. "It's shutting itself down."

"Hey! Hey! What the hell does that mean?!" Daryl called, enraged, trying to follow him. "Hey man, I'm talking to you," he said as he caught up. "What do you mean it's shutting itself down? How can a building do anything?" he asked.

"You'd be surprised," Jenner deadpanned as Rick, Glenn Shane and T Dog ran into the room to meet them. The group met in the middle.

"Jenner, what's happening?" Rick demanded.

"The system is dropping all non essential uses of power. It's designed to keep the computers running until the last possible second. It starts as we approach the half hour mark," he said, "Right on schedule," gesturing to the clock.

He took a long drink as he walked toward the desks, and stopped suddenly. He handed the bottle to Daryl, who grabbed it from him in anger, beginning to realise what was going on. They were in serious trouble.

"It was the French," Jenner said quietly. "They were the last ones to hold out as far as I know. While our people were bolting out the doors and committing suicide in the hallways, they stayed in the labs to the end. They thought they were close to a solution."

"What happened?" Jacqui asked softly.

"Same thing that's happening here. No power grid. Ran out of juice. The world runs on fossil fuel, I mean how stupid is that?" he asked, laughing as he moved to the centre desk again, and sat at his own computer.

Fury was building in Shane, but Rick thought clearly and told everyone to grab their belongings because it was time to go. A pounding, high pitched alarm stopped them all in their tracks as they moved, and panic started to set in. There were only thirty minutes left, and as they all moved toward the doors, Jenner locked them inside. Rick stared at the closed door, trying to work out where this had all gone wrong.

Out of the corner of his eye, Rick saw Daryl running toward Jenner looking mad as hell. He called to Shane, and Shane made it just in time to prevent Daryl striking out. "You son of a bitch, you locked us in here?!" Daryl roared. Jenner didn't even blink. Daryl was suddenly very aware that in a half an hour's time, they were going to die. He knew that he was right without asking any further questions, but he still wanted answers.

Rick asked him to open the door, but he said the topside doors were closed. When Daryl instructed that he open those doors, he said he simply couldn't. That was something the computers controlled. The situation was getting more and more deperate. Daryl could feel panic rising in his chest, and he knew that if he could feel it, it must have been ten times worst for some of the others. Like Carol. He looked for her and saw her, grasping Sophia close to her chest and looking terrified.

"I told you. Once that front door closed, it stayed that way. You heard me say that. It's better this way," Jenner said.

"What happens in twenty eight minutes?" Rick asked, noting the time on the clock. He felt as though something he didn't quite understand was about to happen, but it worried him no end. If he had guessed in the same way Daryl had guessed, he would have understood precisely why Daryl had gotten so mad at Jenner.

"What happens in twenty eight minutes?" Rick roared at him suddenly.

"You know what this place is!" Jenner suddenly shouted, "We protected the public from very nasty stuff! Weaponised small pox, ebola strains that could wipe out half the country; stuff you don't want getting out, ever!" Jenner exploded.

"In the event of a catastrophic power failure," Jenner said, "in a terrorist attack for example, HIT's are deployed to prevent any organisms from getting out," he finished, quieter.

"HIT's?" Rick asked.

"Vi, define," Jenner said.

"HIT's, High Impulse Thermobaric Fuel Layer Explosives consist of a two stage aerosol ignition that produces a blast wave of significantly greater power and duration than any other known explosive except nuclear, the vacuum pressure effects heat oxygen between 5000 and 6000 degrees and is useful where the greatest loss of life and damage to structures is desired."

By the end of the doomsday definition, Carol was openly weeping and clutching Sophia to her. Had she really come this far, and struggled for this long, just for it to end here, now, like this?

"It sets the air on fire," Jenner said quietly. "No pain. An end to sorrow, grief, regret," he finished in a whisper. "Everything."

Daryl looked around, and his heart started to jump. He didn't believe in opting out, he didn't understand why someone wouldn't want to survive. He never allowed other people to make his choices for him, and he struggled with seeing Carol so upset- and she wasn't alone. Everyone was beginning to fall apart. They hadn't come this far for nothing. He was with the group, and he would protect that for as long as he physically could. These were the people, he realised, that were his family now. Jenner wasn't going to destroy that. Daryl made his decision, and he swore to himself that he would do everything in his power to get them out of here.

He flung his half empty bottle against the closed door. "Open he damn door!" he yelled at Jenner. Shane rushed past him and hit the door with a hammer, and once Glenn threw him his axe, Daryl tried that too, to no avail. Carol and Lori sat next to the computers, struggling to compose themselves, crying non stop, trying to calm the kids down but failing in that.

"You'd be better to leave well enough alone," Jenner suggested. "You all know what's out there, a short brutal life and an agonizing death. You know what this does. You've seen it. Is that really what you want for your wife and son?" he directed at Rick.

"I don't want this," Rick elucidated. Daryl was still hammering at the door, the background noise was almost cathartic.

"Can't make a dent," Shane said, approaching Rick and leaning over to catch his breath.

"Those doors are designed to withstand a rocket launcher," Jenner confided as Daryl arrived back and rushed at him with his axe, furious. Shane and Rick barely managed to hold him back.

"You do want this. Last night you said, you knew it was just a matter of time before everyone you knew was dead. There is no hope, there never was. This is our extinction event," Jenner said to Rick.

"This isn't right," Carol choked. "You can't just keep us here!" she cried.

"One tiny moment, a millisecond, no pain," Jenner said, seeking justification.

"My daughter doesn't deserve to die like this!" she said, furious. Nobody deserved to die like this! She pushed Sophia away and got up, walking away in tears to try to calm herself down.

"Wouldn't it be kinder, more compassionate, to hold your loved ones and wait for the clock to run down?" Jenner asked. This time, it was Shane who had to be held back. Daryl didn't interfere as everyone tried to talk Shane down. Shane let off some steam by shooting a few of the surrounding computers, and then Rick knocked him down. Daryl was having trouble accepting that this was happening. They didn't have time for this bullshit, they had to get out!

"I think you're lying," Rick said, abandoning all sense of calm. "About no hope. If that were true you'd have bolted with the rest and taken the easy way out. You didn't. You chose the hard path. Why?"

"It doesn't matter," Jenner said.

"It does, it always does. You stayed when others ran, why?"

"Not because I wanted to. I made a promise to her," he gestured, "My wife."

"Test Subject 19 was your wife," Lori realised. Daryl didn't stay to listen. He went back to the door. Jenner's wife was gone, but that didn't mean they should have to die too. As he reached it, Jenner opened the door and Daryl overheard him offering Rick the chance he had asked for when they first arrived.

With relief flooding his veins, Daryl headed out first but waited to make sure everyone got out. He wasn't going to abandon them now. He watched as Jenner pulled Rick aside and told him something. He wanted to know what it was, but then Carol was in front of him and she wasn't running yet; she was waiting for the others too. He watched as Jacqui stayed behind, confident that she was going the right thing. He didn't understand it, but people had to make their own choices, and he was choosing to live, and to live with these people.

Decisions made, they all turned and ran, making it to the front door as Andrea also decided to stay behind. Dale told the others to go and remained behind, determined to talk her out of it.

They reached the atrium and ran to the doors then the windows, struggling for a way out. Daryl and Shane ran to the windows and beat at them, to no avail. Heat rushed through his blood and Daryl again felt panic rise. They had to get out, they just had to.

Carol watched him fight for their lives, feeling helpless. Shane shot at the window and made no difference. Options were running out, and so was time. She watched Daryl beat the window over and over and over again. In a spark, she realised that he had an answer.

"Rick, I have something I think might help."

"Carol, I don't think a nail file's gonna do it," Shane said, brushing her off, but Rick listened and watched as she pulled out a grenade. Daryl stared, nonplussed. Where the hell did she get that from?!

"That first morning at camp when I washed your uniform, I found this in your pocket," she said. Rick remembered it, he remembered taking it but never using it. He had completely forgotten that it existed.

"Look out!" Shane called as Rick grabbed it from her, went to the window, set and dropped the grenade, then ran for cover. With an explosive burst of energy, the window shattered.

They ran out into the street, breathing the rancid air, still fighting, shooting the walkers that approached in the daylight. The noise had drawn more than a few, but it was less of a concern. They had to reach safety as soon as possible. Daryl cut a path and watched Carol and Sophia make it to T Dog's truck before ducking into his own car and breathing deeply. He filled his lungs over and over, adrenaline rushed through his veins, and suddenly he saw the building dissipate before him. The CDC was gone, but for the first time in a long time, Daryl felt like he was a part of something. He felt like there was maybe a little bit of hope with these people. They were his group now; he had made his decision.


End file.
